English
609.01 Poetry Writing
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workhop form
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to Class Discussion page (for off-week
workshopping)
Mary Adams, Instructor
Office Hours: Coulter 209
T 5-6 PM or by appointment
Class meets in Coulter 203 Email: madams (at) wcu.edu
Phone 828-227-3270
Web Page: http://www.maryadams.net
Texts:
- Lehman, David. Oxford Book of American
Poetry.
- Turco, Lewis. The Book of Forms.
- Patricia Smith: Blood Dazzler
Contact your classmates
TBA
Resources
online (always expanding)
*Note: you must access these
from a WCU campus or follow
these instructions to access them off campus.
Assignments:
- Poems:
- Structured Assignment Poems (6) 35%
- Other Poems (6) 35%
- Critical Analysis of 3 books by a Modern
Poet (10-20 page paper) or Review of three
recent books with something in common--and
presentation 20%
- Class Portfolio (revised poems) with
Critical Preface (5-10 pages) 10% (this
takes the place of your final exam)
- Participation, including online participation 10%
Policies:
- Grading: All poems will receive
at least a B in content unless they do not
do the assignment or are plagiarized (see
below); poems that evince extraordinary
effort or skill will receive an A. (Because
poets should be experts in the language,
I will take off for grammar errors.) All
other written assignments will be graded
like other English papers. Most poems will
experience major revisions.
- Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the
inaccurate or unacknowledged use of another's
material. One plagiarized assignment will
result in a 0 for the assignment; a second
instance will result in failure of the course
and may result in legal action.
- Attendance: This class is small, and
so attendance is crucial. Please don't miss
more than one class, and only if it is an
emergency.
Procedures:
Assignments and Workshopping.
We will use a structured system
for workshopping. You should email me your poems
in Word (doc) or RTF form by the Thursday before
we workshop it. Your classmates will use this
form to respond to the poem in writing;
they will print out that form and bring it to
class.
After the second week, workshopping
takes place in the second half of class. Students
should email me poems by Thursday afternoon.
Poems that are to be workshopped will be available
on the web and e-mailed to students by Friday
afternoon. No one should come to class without
having read the workshop poems and prepared
the workshoping sheet. Each student will
probably have at least four poems workshopped
during the semester.
In workshopping, we follow a prescribed format.
It is important for us to help each other,
but we must always also be respectful of each
other's work.
Handing in Assignments in PC Format
(MS Word or RTF preferred--please don't use
the new "Vista" word format with
the docx extension). Whenever possible, you
should e-mail poems for workshop to me by
Saturday evening, so that I can e-mail them
to the class by Monday. Alternatively, you
can e-mail poems to the whole class by hitting "reply to all" to one of our class emails.
Modern Writers Research Paper:
You should read one collected
poems or three shorter poetry books by any author
from the anthology born after 1920. You can
also choose your own author as long as I approve
your choice.
No popular musicians, including Bob Dylan. No children's authors. No "pop" poetry by Rod McKuen, Jimmy Stewart, Leonard Nimoy, etc.
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