This course is an examination of the formal structural and textual variety in poetry. Students engage in extensive practice in the making of poems and the analysis of both students' manuscripts and 20th-century poetry. The course attempts to make relevant the traditional elements of poetry and their contemporary alternatives. There are weekly writing assignments, including some exercises in prosody.

This course seeks to provide a supportive context for students to grow significantly as writers by discovering and engaging with issues that matter to them. Writing on social and ethical issues, we can see ourselves within a tradition of authors such as Charles Dickens, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, George Orwell, Rachel Carson, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., who have used the power of the pen to inspire social change.