Microcosm/Macrocosm: Poetry Workshop

This poetry class is a hands-on workshop that spans a wide range of poetic types, from the most open ended, experimental, contemporary mode—the prose poem—to one of the most compact, formal, and traditional—the haiku. Students will encounter the haiku, a complex tradition that stimulates intense awareness and attention to the perceptual moment. Haiku practice, in this class, is fully contextualized within Japanese spiritual traditions of Taoism, Shinto, and Zen Buddhism. The class includes a treatment of five types of Japanese poetry that unfold from haiku: tanka, renku, senryu, haibun, and haiga. As we explore these forms, Japanese aesthetics are investigated both through reading, class exercises, and visits to the M.F.A's Japanese section. We will explore the way these traditions have entered and influenced English-language poetry from uniquely American versions of haiku in Richard Wright, Nicholas Virgilio, and beat poets like Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouak, to New York School poets such as John Ashbery, and moderns and postmoderns like Henryette Mullens, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Fred Wah, and Forrest Gander.