Advanced Poetry Workshop: Form & Formlessness

Wallace Stevens suggests that "The essential thing in form is to be free in whatever form is used." How does form provide a kind of freedom for a poet? How does it manifest itself in a poem? Does it mean we have to follow prescribed rules, or is there a more intuitive approach? This course will give students a chance to try out a range of traditional and experimental forms, both as an attempt to improve as writers and in order to interrogate form and its other, what Bataille called the formless, or "unformed" (l'informe). We'll exam in depth rhythm, meter, and the line, as well as forms such as the ballad, the villanelle, the sonnet, the pantoum, and the sestina. We'll also engage with non-traditional forms such as rhizomatic structure, serial poems, list poems, somatic exercises, and walk poems. Readings will likely include an anthology such as the Norton, Carper and Attridge's Meter and Meaning, work by contemporary poets such as A. R. Ammons, John Ashbery, Alice Notley, and Lyn Hejinian, and theoretical texts by by the likes of Bataille, Adorno, Glissant, and Deleuze. Students will be expected to submit exercises each week for workshop, write an essay, serve as discussion leaders, and complete a final portfolio of original poems.