Making Poems Your Own

To know a poem well is to make it your own and to learn something about how poems are made. In this class you will learn many great poems well. You will learn about the techniques and history of this art form as we consider significant changes in the history of lyric, dramatic, and narrative poems and think about poets' uses of voice, diction, image, trope, form, occasion, sequence, and closure. We will be reading poems together and writing about them, making poems and imitations of our own, and learning poems by heart.