Course Description for

Poetry Advanced Workshop

with Paul Haenel

Registration Fee and Course Length

Prerequisites

Standard course: $240 / 8 weeks. Click here to register.

Extended schedule: $300 / 16 weeks. Click here to register.
Extended course is designed for busy people and gives you two weeks to do each lesson but contains NO additional material.

Teacher-approved registration ONLY. Do NOT register unless you have received instructor approval. Admission will be based on writing examples (no fewer than three poems) submitted to instructor.

It was everything I expected and more. Paul was extremely dedicated to leading the workshop. His lectures were thought-provoking, and he provided excellent feedback on my writing. I also especially enjoyed the opportunity to receive critiques and feedback from the other members in the workshop.

- Deanne

Course Contacts

Course Description

An intensive, eight week poetry workshop in which we'll be dealing with poetry written in prescribed forms as well as open form "free verse" poetry, and the prose poem. There will be eight weekly topics and topic lectures emailed to you, along with essays or essay-excerpts for study, and poem examples. Each week presents one specific aspect of the process of reading and writing poetry, along with a corresponding writing assignment. You will be expected to read and critique the work of your fellow classmates, as well.

Though we know and understand that writing is a very private and personal endeavor, there comes a time when we need and benefit from what others say about our efforts. The give and take of feedback the "workshop" environment provides, which sometimes becomes a tug-of-war of will, intention, and understanding brings the poet into the world, and offers him or her the opportunity and challenge of community. Though we do indeed write alone, John Donne's famous phrase that, "no man is an island" suggests what should be obvious to all of us.

This workshop provides you with an environment in which you'll explore, with others, complex topics and ideas that we all struggle with, as poets. It will enable you to further develop your skills as both writer and reader and, ultimately, provide you with a basis for a broader understanding of what lies ahead, as well a real-time sense of how your own poems are being heard by others.

"The work I put in on this course overshadowed what I needed to do for an in-person, three-unit writing course at Stanford. This was serious scholarship."

- Melani

Week 1:

Introduction:
- Instructor's philosophy on workshopping
- Guidelines for critiquing (some ground rules)
Topic and instructor comments:
- The idea of the formal & "period style"
Readings:
- Essay on Frost (from Atlantic Monthly, 1915)
- Essay excerpt on James Wright (by John Haag)
- Poems for study (to be determined)
Assignment:
- Take a free-verse poem of your own and "convert" it into a poem in form; submit both

Week 2: Forms
Topic and instructor comments:
- Forms (continued)
Readings:
- Essay(s) (to be determined)
- Poems for study
Assignments:
- Form poem (sonnet)
- Critique poems (per schedule to be announced)

Week 3: Forms
Topic and instructor comments:
- Forms (continued)
Readings:
- Essay(s) (to be determined)
- Poems for study
Assignments:
- Form poem; imitation exercise (student selects)
- Critique poems (per schedule [see above])

Week 4: form/revision
Topic and instructor comments:
- Revision
Readings:
- Essay on revision by Lynn Emanuel
Assignments:
- Revise one "form" poem (from weeks one, two, or three)
- Critique poems (per schedule)

Week 5: Open Form
Topic and instructor comments:
- Intro remarks on Open form
- Transformation of energy
- Elements of time/context ("stopping time")
Readings:
- Essay(s) (to be determined)
- Poems for study
Assignments:
- Open form poem assignment

Week 6: Open Form
Topic and instructor comments:
- Voice, person, persona
- Tone
Readings:
- Essay(s)
- Poems for study
Assignments:
- Open form poem assignment
- Critique poems (per schedule)

Week 7: Open Form
Topic and instructor comments:
- Music, scoring, lineation
Readings:
- Essay(s) to be determined
- Poems for study
Assignments:
- Open form poem assignment
- Critique poems (per schedule)

Week 8: revision
Topic and instructor comments:
- Wrap-up
Readings:
- Essay on revision by John Haag
Assignments:
- Revise a poem of choice from Week five, six, or seven

Paul R. Haenel, has a BA in English (Creative Writing Option) from Penn State, where he studied poetry with John Haag and John Balaban, and fiction writing with Peter Schneeman and Paul West. Paul has recently worked in the MFA program at George Mason University, studying with Eric Pankey and Carolyn Forche.

Paul's poems have appeared in Antietam Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Poet & Critic, Poet Lore, Cottonwood, The Maryland Poetry Review, and many others. Paul's first volume of poems, Farewell, Goodbye, Wave Goodbye, was published in the spring of 1994.

Paul was among the founding members of the Poetry Workshop in the Writer's Club on AOL (1991), and was host of the shop from late 1995 until early '97.

Haenel has also published short fiction, and one of his stories was nominated in 1992 for a Pushcart Prize. He has written essays on poetry for the literary journal Twin Rivers Review. Most recently, his work has appeared in the anthology Line Drives, 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, edited by Brooke Horvath and Tim Wiles, 2002, Southern Illinois University Press. Paul's most rercent poetry appeared in Two Rivers Review, The Potomac Review and Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller's Cabin, 1984-2001.