Overview

Finesse: The Pleasures of Technique: a poetry workshop with Diane Mehta

In this workshop, we’ll read and discuss poems that explore the interplay between sentence and the line, and learn how to create flow and rhythm using syntax and sound. Each week, we’ll begin by discussing the assigned readings and then shift gears to workshop our own poems. By engaging with the poet’s mind and interrogating our own decisions on the page, we’ll learn to take imaginative leaps and revise our work to be more sonically cohesive while articulating ideas that are poignant and meaningful. We’ll read poems by Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Miroslav Holub, Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Ashbery, W.H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Louis MacNeice, Philip Larkin, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Michael Palmer, Phillis Levin, Dora Malech, Dg Nanouk Okpik, and Rachel Hadas. (A packet of poems will be distributed before the first class.) In a warm and collaborative environment, we’ll become skillful readers and poets who write with confidence and intention.