Product Description

presented by Lin Benedek & Pam Davenport

6 weeks

Starts January 23rd

Tuition: $500

No single element of poetry stands alone; each is distinctive only in relation to other elements. Looking closely at the intersections among line, image and sound in poetry can enhance our appreciation for poems and help us to improve our own writing craft.

This course is designed for poets at all levels of experience, including beginners. We will start with a discussion of writing in free verse—what it is and how poets write this way. During the course we will cover discovery of what to write about; learning craft elements; sustaining momentum and taming the inner critic; workshopping; revising; and possibly submitting to a journal or contest.

Topics will include:

• an overview of the key elements of line, image and music in poetry
• ways of crafting the line
• imagery and figures of speech
• imagery as it relates to a specific sense
• symbolism and the art of description
• sense of place, tone and theme as they relate to imagery
• the look of the poem on the page as its own kind of visual element
• music elements of the poem: rhyme, repetition, rhythm/meter, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia
• the ways diction, tone, and theme relate to the music of the poem
• the long-standing relationship between poetry and song

At the end of the class, students will be able to look at poems differently, with a greater awareness of their texture, and will have a stronger sense of how various poetic elements work together in their own writing and how to incorporate these elements of craft.

4 weeks

January 23 through March 2

Tuition: $500