Writing Poetry in a Global Context

Catalog description

This introductory creative writing class in poetry, structured as a weekly workshop, will be offered in spring and taught in English; students may enroll in the workshop for 3 credits. The class will help students understand the genre of poetry and will help guide them in writing and revising their own creative texts in English. The lecturer will assign readings of poems by major poets in outstanding English translations, representing various countries, from a number of sources including Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, in order to discuss literary elements inherent to the genre as well as the role of translation, and to place the reading and writing of poetry in an international context. The readings will underscore the correspondences among various poets (e.g., Whitman?s influence on Neruda; Williams?s on Latino poetry), translators (e.g., Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, Charles Simic, Mark Strand as translators of Latin American/ European poets), and poetic traditions from around the globe.