MAY (flowers brought to you by April showers—exact rhyme
M 17 Introduction.
Poetic Terms, what is a poem. Discussion of blank verse and free verse. Voices and Visions Robert Frost. Free Verse: Frank O’Hara: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ohara/ohara.htm
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=5092
Fun to Browse through online (Poet Among Painters)
http://books.google.com/books?id=31Pqv32Fh0QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Frank+O%27Hara&source=bl&ots=uAhwh65_YB&sig=buEKI5iTf6_xVgp1d4ampXehGaQ&hl=en&ei=XiXxS-DzJsT38Aby2ND9Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=12&ved=0CDQQ6AEwCw#v=onepage&q&f=false
In-Class Writing.
Homework: Bring in some song lyrics that you consider to be a poem or to be poetic. If possible, bring us the means to hear or play the song, as well as access to the lyrics on the page. (You can use the computer and projector so as to save the environment some grief.) Anyway, using your new shiny terms of poetry, talk about how and why this piece strikes you as poetic.

T 18 Song lyrics. Frost introduction. Discussion of more terms, formal elements. In-class writing of couplets.
Homework: Write a poem that employs at least six of the new terms you have been learning. You can count anaphora, metaphor, simile, etc. The poem should make use of one public belonging that feels somehow personal to the narrator (like that moment before entering the Lincoln Tunnel--one of those public things you've no right to but feel you own -mangled paraphrase of Jacqueline Osherow)

W 19 Introduction to Formal Verse.
http://www.utm.edu/departments/english/everett/sonnet.htm
http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sonnet.html
http://www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm


Homework: Write a sonnet. Bring in enough copies for the class.

H 20 Sonnet Workshop. Villanelles, Pantoums. Homework: Write a villanelle or pantoum, bring 7 copies.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5796
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5786

F 21Sestina
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/03/ahead/sestina.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sestina
http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/CraftOfPoetry/sestina.html


Homework: Write a sestina to be workshopped on Monday. Bring 7 copies/ ALSO, don't forget your TWO OBJECTS. One object will be one that you will want to ruminate upon in a number of stanzas, the second will be one that you would be willing to "donate" to another student. They don't need to be anything alike and they can be something from nature, a thrift shop, a playing or post card, a shard of pottery, a found pinecone or seashell, anyway, a thing, compelling enough that someone might want to work with it for some time.
Two-Day CaesuraM 24 The Long Poem Hart Crane, Walt Whitman, Eliot KhalilWilson, Anne Sexton,