Splash Biography

What do you think poetry is? The traditional description of the poetic process goes something like this: the poet sits down, in seclusion or nature, and expresses to the reader in ornate language the depths of his feeling. As Wordsworth expressed it, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." We guess that this is a fine description, but, truth be told, it leads to some pretty boring poetry. We want to explore alternative ways of thinking about poetry: among the styles we'll explore are mathematical or chance-based poetry, nonsensical or nongrammatical poetry, collaboratively-written work and Surrealist games, and erasure, the process of selecting words from an existing text to constitute a new piece. The format of the class will be a hybrid of both reading "established" poets and learning to produce and critique our own work.