| Wksp:Form and Formlessness |
Writing |
2040 (001) |
Fall 2026 |
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Description
Wallace Stevens suggests that 'The essential thing in form is to be free in whatever form is used.' We'll pursue this seeming paradox with exercises in meter and free verse, exploring both traditional forms, like sonnets, and experimental forms, like collage and serial poems. We read diverse contemporary and classic poets, write several poems, and workshop peer work weekly, culminating in a portfolio of new poems as a final project.
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Class Number
2002
Credits
3
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| Workshop: Intertext |
Writing |
5001 (003) |
Fall 2026 |
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Description
Might there be a kind of poem that acts like a parasite latched on to a host body? A poem whose very life is the fusion of various sources, voices, discourses? This poetry workshop invites students to read and write poetry that, either overtly or subtly, engages with other texts or weaves together various discourses. We'll examine ways that poems create intertextual relationships (e.g. quoting, voicing, alluding, echoing, stealing, sampling, imitating, translating...) and test out these methods in our own writing. While the focus of the readings and exercises will mainly be on poetry, students writing prose, fiction, or hybrid genres are invited to join and work in their own genres. Afterall, the theoretical concept of intertextuality comes from Bakhtin's critical texts on Rablais and Dostoyevsky! Readings will likely sample older intertextual models (such as ballads), as well as modern and contemporary explorations, such as work by Ted Berrigan, Terrance Hayes, Rosmarie Waldrop, Jack Spicer, Maggie Nelson, and others.
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Class Number
2087
Credits
3
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| Sem: Writing as Desecration |
Writing |
5500 (004) |
Spring 2026 |
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Description
To write in any genre is a gesture that puts one in a relationship with predecessors and precursors. While this relationship is often constructed as a dialogue, it can also be a conflict, full of clatter, disagreement and intentional offensiveness. In this sense, the writer's mark crosses out the predecessors' work, and functions as an act of desecration. Furthermore, writing itself might internalize this structure, making a text that turns back on itself via contradiction and negation. In this seminar, we will read and look at various examples of desecration, and try them out in both our own and others' writing (for example, cutups, collages, erasures, etc.). We will draw comparisons with tendencies in both the visual arts and pop music, reading widely in modern and contemporary writing, likely including work by Tristan Tzara, Leonora Carrington, Ted Berrigan, Nikki Wallschlaeger, and Alice Notley.
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Class Number
2473
Credits
3
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| Grad Projects:Writing |
Writing |
6009 (008) |
Spring 2026 |
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Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
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Class Number
2345
Credits
3 - 6
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| Grad Projects:Writing |
Writing |
6009 (011) |
Fall 2026 |
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Description
Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.
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Class Number
2166
Credits
3 - 6
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