ENGLISH 212: GRADUATE POETRY WORKSHOP
Instructor: Matthew Zapruder
Email: [email protected]
Phone: x 8131
Office Hours: Thursday 1-3pm or by appointment, Dante 319N
Note: Please sign up for office hours on the list posted on my office door. I cannot make
appointments or changes to appointments by email. Also, I appreciate you making every effort to
meet with me during my designated office hours. However, if you are unable to meet with me
during the time above, please let me know, and I will gladly make other arrangements.
Course Description
Many of the choices we make as poets are, as they should be, instinctive, and justified by
intuition and feeling. Once the poem is on the page, however, it can be productively considered as
a set of decisions, choices, and effects (whether conscious or not) that together create an artistic
act, a poem.
William Carlos Williams called the poem "a small or large machine made of words." While this
may seem cold or mechanical, it can also be a useful way to step back from our own work, and to
think about how exactly our machines are built and designed, as well as the great mystery of what
ultimately our various machines are designed to produce.
Another quote: Simone Weil famously wrote that attention is the rarest and purest form of
generosity. In this workshop, we will seriously and closely attend to the machines made of words
we and our peers have made. Our goal will be to reflect back to each other the effects on us as
readers of the myriad poetic decisions, conscious and otherwise, that make up our poems.
In this course we will consider various choices and effects typical of the poetic process, such as
titles, beginnings, metaphor/imagery, form, line breaks, syntax, closure, and many others, in order
to learn more about the effects of our current, and potential, choices in our poems on readers. We
will also consider the sorts of larger concepts (such as duende, negative capability, ambiguity,
meaning, creativity, imagination, audience, responsibility) that can help us see what effects our
poems might be having on readers.
Our focus will be on close reading the poetry of our peers, and when necessary and helpful,
reading the poetry of the past that can help us understand how we might move forward. Students
will write at least one poem per week, and engage in thorough and significant revision over the
course of the semester. Though we won't be able to read all of these poems in class, at the end of
the semester students will turn in a portfolio composed of 15 new poems, as well as revisions.
Evaluation of course performance will be based on the completion of that portfolio, as well as
class participation.
Each student should schedule two half hour meetings with me during the course of the semester,
the first before fall break (the week of October 21st), and one after. Please sign up for these
appointments on my office door. Again, if you are unable to be at office hours during the
designated time, let me know and we’ll find a different time.
ENGLISH 212: GRADUATE POETRY WORKSHOP
Zapruder
Learning Outcomes
Students in this course will:
• write at least one poem a week
• develop skills of discussing and analyzing poetry through participation in class discussions;
• closely read and discuss notable previously published individual poems, in order to think about
what we might learn and make use of in our own poems;
• gain insight into more and less successful techniques in your own poems
• learn to revise poems based on responses of your peers and your instructor
• compose a final portfolio of new poems, and revised versions of those poems
Grades and Other Information
All grades for Saint Mary’s MFA Creative Writing students are Pass / Fail unless a student
requests otherwise. The student who misses four or more class sessions for whatever reason will
likely not receive credit. (Arriving more than 10 minutes late to class, disappearing for extended
periods during class, or leaving more than 10 minutes early translates into an absence.) Also in
jeopardy of failing the course is the student who fails to participate in the discussions on a weekly
basis. If there any emergencies or special circumstances please let me know before you miss
class, or as soon as possible afterward. Also, you are responsible for keeping up with the reading
and any other assignments, so if you are unable to attend class please contact me or another
student as soon as possible to find out what you have missed.
Saint Mary’s College expects every member of its community to abide by the Academic Honor
Code. According to the Code, “Academic dishonesty is a serious violation of College policy
because, among other things, it undermines the bonds of trust and honesty between members of
the community.” Violations of the Code include but are not limited to acts of plagiarism. For
more information, please consult the Student Handbook at http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/graduateprofessional-academics/graduate-and-professional-student-handbook
Student Disability Services extends reasonable and appropriate accommodations that take into
account the context of the course and its essential elements for individuals with qualifying
disabilities. Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact the Student Disability Services
Office at (925) 631-4358 or [email protected] to arrange a confidential appointment to discuss
accommodation guidelines and available services. Additional information regarding the services
available may be found at the following address on the Saint Mary’s website:
http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/sds
INITIAL RUBRIC
The idea of coming up with a rubric for poetry has always interested me. The questions and
considerations below are an experiment, based on my experience in workshop of what sorts of
things are productive to think and talk when we see and read a new poem. They are designed to
get us thinking about poems. Please compose a short written response to the initial poems we will
workshop. This is not an evaluative document, but an observational response.
A rubric is a set of considerations or standards that a group of people can use to approach
something that is not easily quantifiable, like a piece of writing for instance. It is designed to
articulate common concerns: otherwise, people can easily end up having formless, pointless
conversations in which the true bases for opinions and evaluations are never made clear. Even if
the rubric is ultimately discarded or found limiting, it is a useful place to begin a discussion.
Please think about the answers to some, a few, or none of the questions below (you do not need to
produce these answers in writing, though notes for each poem would be helpful for you in class,
as well as welcome for the writer). Also feel free to substitute in other questions and
considerations you find more relevant or useful: if you do, please clearly indicate what those
questions and considerations are. The answers to these questions are, of course, completely
subjective: there is no right answer to any of them. They are, again, just interesting initial places
of discussion.
• who (if anyone) is speaking?
• what is the situation/location of the poem?
• describe the significance and function of the title and first line
• what is this poem for?
• what does this poem do?
• what (or who) does this poem change? How?
• what changes in this poem?
• what is the center of energy of the poem? Is there a particular line, or word, that seems to be the
center of energy?
• what is most troubling and unfamiliar about this poem?
• what is the most "beautiful" moment of the poem? Why?
• what is the most intellectual moment of the poem?
• who, if anyone, seems to be poetic spirit guide or predecessor of this poem?
• is there fear in this poem? If so, what is it of?
• how does the poem end? Why?
• what does the poem want you to think about?