About the Offering

In American poetry during the last decade, there have been noteworthy instances when a particular form gained a heightened visibility because it seemed to manifest the aesthetic and social zeitgeists of the moment. Think of erasures. Or the sonnet. This is recently true of the prose poem, which has a long history. In the present, the form has taken on renewed freshness and urgency, serving as a site for poetry’s ongoing confrontations with history, memory, desire, joy.

In this weekend intensive, we’ll look at some powerful prose poems by a variety of writers, from Anne Carson to Diana Khoi Nguyen. We will also discuss the question of what makes a prose poem a poem at all, when it eschews the line, which is usually thought of as a poem’s defining characteristic. Along with close readings of poems by master poets, I’ll share many writing prompts for participants to try after the class. Especially if you’ve never tried the prose poem form before, this class will encourage you to do so.

Ultimately, this focused look at the form’s possibilities will ideally lead to new ways of deepening and complicating your poems, including those that utilize lineation.