In Rhyme’s Reason, his guide to English prosody, John Hollander writes: “I am old enough to have grown up in the park, and to map a region one loves is a way of caressing it.” Landmarks, spaces, customs, languages — when they fall out of practice or vanish completely, we lose entire realms of interior possibility. This course intends to expand those regions by mapping and caressing them. We’ll talk image and idea, line and sentence, rhyme and rhythm, sense and nonsense. Attention will be paid to the art of reading of poetry aloud for a public audience. We will conclude by discussing revision strategies and opportunities for publication. No prior experience with poetry writing is required, but advanced poets are also welcome.
Justin Jannise studied poetry at Yale and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Houston. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, New Ohio Review, Columbia Journal, Yale Review, The Awland Zócalo Public Square. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Gulf Coast and the recipient of an Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize.