LFU:online

Insight into the craft of poetry through the analysis of works written by US American poets. Special focus will be placed on independent work that produces annotations (short essays) and poems.

If a poem were a clock, would it not be easiest to learn how to make one by first taking another clock apart? Thus, in this class, we will read and analyze poems through a maker’s lens, looking at how poets use craft (structure, line, syntax, image, repetition, etc.) to manage language and the reader’s experience of language. Why do some combinations of words stir us and others seem so blah? We will then use what we’ve learned to write and revise our own poems using feedback provided in a workshop setting. The instructor will provide links and PDFs of the required reading (both individual poems and essays on craft). Poets we might read: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, W. C. Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Larry Levis, C. K. Williams, Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Alberto Rios, Terrance Hayes, Natalie Diaz, Tarfia Faizullah, Roger Reeves, Diane Seuss, Tracy K. Smith, Francine J. Harris, and Ocean Vuong. (Please note the instructor will choose specific poems. We will not be reading entire collections.)

This course will include both online and face-to-face instruction. The instructor will provide written lectures on craft and required reading materials on a private blog. Short papers in which students analyze how poets use particular craft elements in poems will be sent to the instructor via email. With each lecture, prompts will be provided to kickstart the students' creative work. Face-to-face time will be spent in workshop mode (November/December 2016), discussing the students' own poetry. Students can expect to produce 5 or 6 three-page analyses and 5 or 6 poems.

Students can expect to produce 5 or 6 three-page analyses and 5 or 6 poems.

Prerequisite for the Bachelor Program (612): positive completion of compulsory module 10,  for the Teacher Training Program (Lehramtsstudium: 344): VO2: Introduction to American Literary Studies, for BA Lehramt (344): positive completion of compulsory module 13

For the Teacher Training Program (Lehramtsstudium: 344): PS2: American Literature.

Due to substantial differences in the allocation of ECTS-Credits in various curricula (teacher training program - BA/MA English and American Studies), the requirements for this course vary. Information will be provided by the instructor at the beginning of the course.