EssayI started cleaning out my garage in 2020 and found a box of poetry essays from college. I had been hanging on to them in case I became a teacher (I didn’t).  Instead I’ve been reviewing them here as I decide to find electronic copies or trash them. I’m sure they won’t all be available online but I’ll try to find a book or some way to track them down if you want to read them for yourself.

List in Order of Completion

  1. On the Function of the Line by Denise Levertov (Line Breaks)
  2. Elton Glaser’s “Entrances and Exits: Three Key Positions in the Poem” (Titles)
  3. Elton Glaser’s “Entrances and Exits: Three Key Positions in the Poem” (First Lines)
  4. Elton Glaser’s “Entrances and Exits: Three Key Positions in the Poem” (Last Lines)
  5. Stephen Dobyn’s “Metaphor and the Authenticating Act of Memory” (Metaphors)
  6. Beth Nguyen’s “Unsilencing the Writing Workshop” (Writing Workshops)
  7. Lynn Emmanuel’s “Why Am I A Poet? (What poetry is)
  8. Chinua Achebe’s “The Writer and His Community” (Who owns art?)
  9. “The Prose Poem: The Example of A Potato” by Karl Johnson (Prose Poetry)
  10. “Women Poets and the Emergence of Modernism” by Margaret Dickie (Gertrude Stein, H.D., Marianne Moore)
  11. “Improvisations, The Poem as Journey” by Charles Wright (the poem as a journey)
  12. “Poetry and Audience” by Robert McDowell (audiences for poetry)
  13. Jorie Graham introduction to the anthology The Best American Poetry 1990 (survey of the landscape)
  14. Louis Simpson’s “On Being a Poet in America” and “To Make Words Disappear” (Grumpy poets telling us what poetry should be)
  15. “Taking What You Need, Giving What You Can: The Writer as Student and Teacher” by David Huddle (Writing Workshops)
  16. “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction” by Flannery O’Connor (Writers vs. Readers)
  17. “The Problem with Poetry” by David Awbrey (Academics vs. Readers)
  18. “[For the Sake of a Single Poem]” by Rainer Maria Rilke (Writing from experience)
  19. “What Do I Like? by Theodore Roethke (Music in Lines of Poetry)
  20. “Everybody Was Innocent: On Writing and War” by Christopher Merrill (Writing about War)
  21. “Poetry and Subject Matter” and “Achievements of Intellectualist Poetry” by Mark Van Doren (MVD vs. Modernism)
  22. “The ‘Technique’ of Re-Reading” by Marvin Bell (Reading Poetry)
  23. “Toward an Open Universe” by Robert Duncan (Becoming conscious, musical thought, the rhythm of a poem)
  24. “The Experience of Poetry in the Scientific Age” by May Swenson (The poetic versus scientific experience)
  25. “Dull Subjects” by William Mathews (What makes an interesting subject in a poem)
  26.  “On Disproportion” by Tony Hoagland (Flamboyance in poems)
  27. “For the Artist Everything in Nature is Beautiful” by Paul Gsell andAuguste Rodin (Authenticity)
  28. “Disruption, Hesitation, Silence” by Louise Glück (Stripping Down, the Unfinished)
  29. “As If Your Life Depended Upon It” and “The Hermit’s Scream” by Adrienne Rich, Excerpts from American Primer by Walt Whitman and “Poetry is Not a Luxury” by Audre Lorde (Activism in Poetry, Writing about Social Issues)
  30. “Poetry and Pleasure” by Robert Pinsky (Physically Pleasurable Poems)
  31. “A Narrow World Made Wide” (profile of Rita Dove in The Washington Post Magazine)
  32. “A Man Goes Into a Bar, See, And Recites: The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strained” by Robert Pinsky (memorizing poems)
  33. Adrienne Rich’s Clairvoyance
  34. “George and Mary Oppen: Poetry and Friendship” by Sharon Olds (George Oppen and his thoughts)
  35. “Sentences and Syntax: The Voice Making Itself” by David Rivard (craft techniques)
  36. “Families and Prisons” by Robert Hass (writing about family versus writing about prisons and politics)
  37. “Entering Poetry” by Philip Levine (the metaphysics of entering poetry as autobiography)
  38. “Notes on Poetry and Philosophy” by Charles Simic (the metaphysics of entering poetry as philosophy)
  39. “Small Memoir on Form” and “A Brief Visual-Arts Memoir” by Sharon Olds (biography and influences)
  40.   “The Duende Theory and Divertissement” by Federico Garcia Lorca (duende or great feeling)
  41. “1NK M4THM4T1CS, 4N 1NTRODUCT1ON TO L4NGU4GE POETRY” by JOEL LEW1S (language poetry)
  42. “Mine Own John Berryman” by Philip Levine (Writing Workshops)
  43. Introduction to Helpful Hints, Notes on Writing Poetry by Jon Anderson and The Postmoderns, The New American Poetry Revised edited by Donald Allen and George F. Butterick (craft hints; postmodernism)
  44. “Generations ‘I’: The Future of Autobiographical Poetry” by David Wojan (Autobiographical / Confessional poetry)
  45. “Contemporary American Poetry: The Radical Tradition” by A. Poulin Jr. (review of the Contemporary poets)
  46. “Variations on a Generation” by Gregory Corso (history of the Beat Poets)
  47. “The Abuse of the Second-Person Pronoun” by Jonathan Holden (second-person pronouns)
  48. “Postmodern Poetic Form: A Theory”by Jonathan Holden and “Existing Things”by Cynthia Ozick (definitions of postmodernism and what first inspires the child artist)
  49. “Staking the Claim of the Title” by Nance Van Winckel (titles)
  50. “Ruins and Poetry” by Czeslaw Milosz (writing with the devastation of war)
  51. Introduction of the book Sleeping on the Wing: An Anthology of Modern Poetry by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell (Checklists for Newbie Poets)
  52. “Stray Thoughts on Roethke and Teaching” by Richard Hugo (Theodore Roethke as a teacher)
  53. “Poetry on the Run” by Arthur Roth (memorizing poems)
  54. “The Idea of the Modern” by Irving Howe (Modernism and Nihilism)
  55. Chapter Eleven of The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser (the relationship between the reader and writer, in inseparability of life and art)
  56. “The Limited Value of Master’s Programs in Creative Writing” by Jay Parini and “In Defense of Creative-Writing Classes” by Richard Hugo (MFA creative writing programs)
  57. The introductions from The Essential Haiku, Versions of Bashō, Buson and Issa by Robert Hass (three haiku masters)
  58. Chapters from The Untouched Key, Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness by Alice Miller (subconsious childhood experience)
  59. Various writings on the prose poem from The Common Table: The Prose Poem event at Sarah Lawrence College (prose poetry)
  60. “Household Economy, Ruthlessness, Romance and the Art of Hospitality: Notes on Revision” by Richard Tillinghast; Waiting and Silence” by Susan Snively; Kim Adonnizio’s “do-overs and revisions” (revision)
  61. Bits About Value, Confession, Intimacy, the Poetry Buffet and the Unconscious from Paul Gray, Muriel Rukeyser, Donald Revell, W.S. DiPiero, Carl Jung and Robert Bly
  62. Poetry Features from The Atlantic magazine, various authors (poets and madness, what utility does poetry serve)
  63. “A Dark and Stormy Night” and “The Terrible Three Rules” by John Rechy (pastiche and writing workshop rules)
  64. “Words” and “Words” by William Zinsser and Winston Weathers (word choice)
  65. “Silences” by Tillie Olsen (What keeps writers from writing?)
  66. “The Lead” and “The Ending” by William Zinsser (beginnings and endings)
  67. Excerpts from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones (the spirit in writing)
  68. Concepts vs. Identities: “Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde” by Cathy Park Hong  and “Delusions of Progress” by Daniel Borzutsky (conceptual poetry vs. the poetry of witness and identity)

Topics

Writing Workshops/Programs

  1. Beth Nguyen’s “Unsilencing the Writing Workshop” (Writing Workshops)
  2. “Taking What You Need, Giving What You Can: The Writer as Student and Teacher” by David Huddle (Writing Workshops)
  3. “Mine Own John Berryman” by Philip Levine (Writing Workshops)
  4. “The Limited Value of Master’s Programs in Creative Writing” by Jay Parini and “In Defense of Creative-Writing Classes” by Richard Hugo (MFA creative writing programs)
  5. “The Terrible Three Rules” by John Rechy (pastiche and writing workshop rules)

Us vs. Them

  1. “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction” by Flannery O’Connor (Writers vs. Readers)
  2. The Problem with Poetry” by David Awbrey (Academics vs. Readers)
  3. “Poetry and Subject Matter” and “Achievements of Intellectualist Poetry” by Mark Van Doren (MVD vs. Modernism)
  4. Concepts vs. Identities: “Delusions of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde” by Cathy Park Hong  and “Delusions of Progress” by Daniel Borzutsky (conceptual poetry vs. the poetry of witness and identity)

Crafting Titles

  1. Elton Glaser’s “Entrances and Exits: Three Key Positions in the Poem”
  2. “Staking the Claim of the Title” by Nance Van Winckel

Prose Poems

  1. “The Prose Poem: The Example of A Potato” by Karl Johnson
  2. Various writings on the prose poem from The Common Table: The Prose Poem event at Sarah Lawrence College (prose poetry)

Beginnings and Endings

  1. Elton Glaser’s “Entrances and Exits: Three Key Positions in the Poem” (First Lines)
  2. Elton Glaser’s “Entrances and Exits: Three Key Positions in the Poem” (Last Lines)
  3. “The Lead” and “The Ending” by William Zinsser (beginnings and endings)

Modernism

  1. “Women Poets and the Emergence of Modernism” by Margaret Dickie (Gertrude Stein, H.D., Marianne Moore)
  2. “Poetry and Subject Matter” and “Achievements of Intellectualist Poetry” by Mark Van Doren (MVD vs. Modernism)
  3. “The Idea of the Modern” by Irving Howe (Modernism and Nihilism)

Postmodernism

  1. Introduction to Helpful Hints, Notes on Writing Poetry by Jon Anderson and The Postmoderns, The New American Poetry Revised edited by Donald Allen and George F. Butterick (craft hints; postmodernism)
  2. “Postmodern Poetic Form: A Theory”by Jonathan Holden and “Existing Things”by Cynthia Ozick (definitions of postmodernism and what first inspires the child artist)