Saturday, January 25 | Blas Falconer | Turning Toward A Mystery
What do we mean by the “poetic turn”? I think of it as a change of gears, a ship tacking on the water, any shift in the poem, rhetorical or formal, from description to reflection, from question to answer, from one Point of View to another, from statement to contradiction—it’s a swing of the camera’s lens, a new voice or tone, a new language, a break in rhyme or meter. There are countless ways that a poem can turn, and the turn of a poem can be quiet and subtle or dramatic and unsettling.
Kim Addonizio says: “A turn is … a measure of energy… The leap from one synapse to another…one level of understanding…to being in the presence of the mystery.” In his essay “Bivalves,” Carl Phillips considers … “the hinge…as a way to get the reader from one place to another…part of the poem’s musculature, … [giving] an athleticism to the poem, even as it also promotes momentum.” In an interview, Hayan Charara says, “The “poetic turn” is another way to talk about misdirection. Some part of the poem…builds expectation, then it turns against that expectation.” Gregory Pardlo says, “If a poem doesn’t have a turn, I want my money back.”
Looking at a variety of poems, we’ll discuss the kinds of turns we make and the ones we have yet to risk. We will consider how the turn displays the poet’s particular imagination, that impulse towards mystery—boundless, infinite. We will consider how participants can apply the ideas from the workshop to their own poems.
This Zoom workshop is open to writers at all levels, and limited to ten students. Please review the course policies page before registering for any class. The course fee is $150.00.
Please email Patrick Donnelly at pdonnelly@frostplace.org with any questions.
About the Instructor
Blas Falconer is the author of four poetry collections, including Rara Avis (Four Way Books, 2024) and Forgive the Body This Failure (Four Way Books, 2018). He is also the co-editor of two anthologies: The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity (The University of Arizona Press, 2011), with Lorraine M. López, and Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), with Beth Martinelli and Helena Mesa. Falconer is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. He teaches in the San Diego State University MFA program and is the editor-in-chief at Poetry International Online.
Read more: https://blasfalconer.com/
Registrants, please note: In the payment field, you can choose to edit the suggested contribution to Zeffy by tapping ‘other’ and typing in another amount.
Saturday, March 8 | Tina Cane | Congeries, Catalogues, and Lists
My life is ruled by lists — not the top-ten type — but the scrawled kind I find stashed post-season in winter coats or crumpled at the bottom of my bottomless bag. Lists like: “vodka, milk, apples, cookies, bananas, eggs, soap.” There is poetry in this. Not because I am a poet but because, like you, I am busy and, in the ensemble, these lists reveal the habits of a life — a life of drinking vodka and eating bananas, of washing one’s hands. They also chart an ever-changing cycle of concerns—which is the province of poetry. In this generative workshop, we will think about form, intention, the cumulative tension and power of lists, and how they fit into our concept of what a poem is. We will discover how catalogue and compendium can unlock creativity, and can potentially map the course for a cycle of poems.
This Zoom workshop is open to writers at all levels, and limited to ten students. Please review the course policies page before registering for any class. The course fee is $150.00.
Please email Patrick Donnelly at pdonnelly@frostplace.org with any questions.
About the Instructor
Tina Cane is the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI, and, from 2016-2024, served as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island, where she lives with her husband and three children. Read more: https://www.tinacane.ink/
Registrants, please note: In the payment field, you can choose to edit the suggested contribution to Zeffy by tapping ‘other’ and typing in another amount.