This course attends to the work of several American poets whose careers span much of the second half of the 20th century. Poets include Elizabeth Bishop, James Wright, Randall Jarrell,...
An introduction to the major categories of lyric poetry—from Chaucer’s time to ours, from this zip code and wherever else English has traveled—through poetry’s ties to just about everything. How does life give rise to different kinds of poems, and how do those poems shape, memorialize, and alter life? What can poetry steal from neighboring discourses and media—song, prayer, visual art, news, drama, narrative, argument—and what does poetry stake out as its own? How much can history—the history of culture and politics, of technology and language—teach us about how poets revolutionize past forms and devise new forms? Readings include the greatest hits of English-language poetry, a stellar collection from 2019 (Jericho Brown’s The Tradition), and selections from recent books and literary magazines. Assignments include critical essays and shorter creative exercises—parodies, translations, imitations.
Note: Be sure to attend first class meeting to be considered for admittance.
Instructor: Vidyan Ravinthiran Mondays & Wednesdays, 1:30-2:30 pm | Location: Sever 110 Enrollment: Limited to 27 students.
Our thoughts and feelings about identity, self-expression, and the power of the imagination draw on the British Romantic poetry of the Long Eighteenth Century--whether we've read any or not. Focusing on one such poet, John Keats (his key poems, and his key ideas, about 'negative capability...
Major poets and poems from T.S. Eliot and Marianne Moore almost to the present day: we may also read, among others, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Lorine Niedecker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Bernadette Mayer, J F Herrera, James Merrill, C. D. Wright, and Terrance Hayes. Appropriate both for students who know some of these poets well, and for those relatively new to the study of poems.
Instructor: Gordon Teskey Day & Time: Monday 12-2pm Course Website In an age of scientific and political revolution, how do poets respond when common beliefs about God, humans, cosmic and social order, consciousness, and gender have been taken away? Modern poetry starts in the seventeenth century when poets, notably women poets, sought new grounds for poetic expression.
Instructor: Stephanie Burt Day & Time: Mondays & Wednesdays 12:00-3:00pm (EDT) Summer 7-week session | CRN 34505 Limited to 15 students
This course is about writing—and, therefore, reading—many kinds of poetry, including brand new open forms, very old rhymed and metered forms, digital native forms, parodies, and (as Yeats put it) "imitation of great masters." It offers a chance to expand the potential for your own writing, taught mostly in workshop format, as well as a way to find models and allies.
Instructor: Joan Naviyuk Kane Day & Time: Thursday 12-2:45pm Course Website This poetry workshop centers the work of BIPOC writers through intensive study of poetry writing and the writing process, focusing on craft techniques of imagery, rhythm, and poetic structure. This workshop will initially focus on the generation of new work but will move toward revision-based instruction and discussion. Each student will have their poems workshopped at least twice per semester. Students are responsible for reading assigned texts, submitting required work for workshop, reading and writing critiques of fellow students’ work, accessing (livestreamed or archived) readings, reading and (writing about) one poem closely each week, and memorizing and recording two poems.
Supplemental Application Information: Applicants are requested to submit a maximum of 10 pages of poetry (not more than one poem to a page), and a 2-3 page cover letter in which they may address how long they’ve been writing seriously, what previous study they have done in literary arts, any additional experiences that seem relevant to their application, what type of direct criticism and revision they are seeking from the workshop, craft approaches they would like to know more about, and discussion of any other writers in which the writers’ craft and/or ways in which the writers’ work has served as a model for the applicant’s own literary ambitions.
Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: Sever 112 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
In this workshop, we’ll look closely at the craft-based choices poets make, and track the effects they have upon what we as readers are made to think and feel. How can implementing similar strategies better prepare us to engage the questions making up our own poetic material? We’ll also talk about content. What can poetry reveal about the ways our interior selves are shaped by public realities like race, class, sexuality, injustice and more?
Instructor: Josh Bell Monday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: Barker 018 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
Initially, students can expect to read, discuss, and imitate the strategies of a wide range of poets writing in English; to investigate and reproduce prescribed forms and poetic structures; and to engage in writing exercises meant to expand the conception of what a poem is and can be. As the course progresses, reading assignments will be tailored on an individual basis, and an increasing amount of time will be spent in discussion of student work.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.
Instructor: Josh Bell Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site
By guided reading, classroom discussion, one on one conference, and formal and structural experimentation, members of the Advanced Poetry Workshop will look to hone, deepen, and challenge the development of their poetic inquiry and aesthetic. Students will be required to write and submit one new poem each week and to perform in-depth, weekly critiques of their colleagues' work.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.
Instructor: Jorie Graham Tuesday, 6:00-8:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
Open by application to both undergraduates and graduates. Class includes the discussion of literary texts as well as work written by students.
For Spring 2024, the class will be remote only.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.
Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
In their quest for clarity, revelation and consolation, poets engage with, reflect upon and speak back to the world in a range of ways. In pursuit of these very same aims, poets also listen closely to what has already been said by others at registers spanning intimate exchange, public discourse and sacred utterance. In this poetry workshop, we’ll engage in an exploration of archival and found materials—letters, news articles, historical texts, police reports, photographs and more—to see what new forms of dialogue they might invite, and what light they might shed upon the questions, concerns and apprehensions of our current time. With readings by Reginald Dwayne Betts, Robin Coste Lewis, Solmaz Sharif, Jay Bernard and others. It will be helpful to enter into the semester with some pre-existing material that you wish to revise (a short story, several chapters of a novel). Previous experience with workshopping writing is encouraged but not required.
Instructor: Jorie Graham Wednesday, 6:00-8:45pm | Location: This class will be fully remote Spring 2024. Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site
Open by application to both undergraduates and graduates. Class lasts three hours and includes the study of poetic practice in conjunction with the discussion of student work.
For Spring 2024, the class will be remote only.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.
This workshop will be an exploration into the ways that poets in the past have reckoned in print with the personal and the public, while also provided students with a fundamental understanding of what the public/private dichotomy is, as seen through the works of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucille Clifton, Jack Gilbert and others, with the ultimate goal being to produce a body of work of their own that is aware of both its referents and singularities. Students will be expected to produce drafts on a weekly basis.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, up to ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.
Instructor: Josh Bell Monday, TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
Initially, students can expect to read, discuss, and imitate the strategies of a wide range of poets writing in English; to investigate and reproduce prescribed forms and poetic structures; and to engage in writing exercises meant to expand the conception of what a poem is and can be. As the course progresses, reading assignments will be tailored on an individual basis, and an increasing amount of time will be spent in discussion of student work.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.
Instructor: Reginald Dwayne Betts TDB | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
This workshop will be an exploration into the ways that poets in the past have reckoned in print with the personal and the public, while also provided students with a fundamental understanding of what the public/private dichotomy is, as seen through the works of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucille Clifton, Jack Gilbert and others, with the ultimate goal being to produce a body of work of their own that is aware of both its referents and singularities. Students will be expected to produce drafts on a weekly basis.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, up to ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.
Instructor: Josh Bell TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students
By guided reading, classroom discussion, one on one conference, and formal and structural experimentation, members of the Advanced Poetry Workshop will look to hone, deepen, and challenge the development of their poetic inquiry and aesthetic. Students will be required to write and submit one new poem each week and to perform in-depth, weekly critiques of their colleagues' work.
Supplemental Application Information: Please submit a portfolio including a letter of interest, ten poems, and a list of classes (taken at Harvard or elsewhere) that seem to have bearing on your enterprise.
Instructor: Tracy K. Smith Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: Lamont 401 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site
What can a poem achieve when it contemplates or even emulates a work of art in another medium? In this workshop, we'll read and write poems that engage with other art forms--and we'll test out what a foray into another artistic practice allows us to carry back over into the formal methods and behaviors of poetry. With poems by Keats, Rilke, Auden, Hughes, and Brooks, as well as Kevin Young, Evie Shockley, Ama Codjoe and other contemporary voices.
