This course will closely examine various modes in which poetry is commonly written, possibly including the narrative poem, the elegy, the ode, the ekphrastic, the prose poem, the pastoral, the litany or list poem, the documentary poem, the conceptual poem, and the erasure. Students will also be introduced to the vocabulary and practice of traditional prosody, acquire a familiarity with writing in meter, and attempt such traditional forms as the villanelle, the sestina, the pantoum, and the ghazal. Each week students will read a collection of poems (or its equivalent) in a given genre. Weekly critical and/or creative assignments in each of the genres or forms, and one longer project.

Students are required to attend all Literature Evenings and Poetry at Bennington events (typically held on alternating Wednesdays at 7pm).