When we write letters, we are opening up a conversation with an imagined listener. They could be a trusted confidant(e), a lover, a family member—or even a politician, representative, or figure of authority. We combine anecdote with fact-telling. We can share secrets, imagine futures, or request information and action, depending on our intended audience. Even the diary is a sustained letter to the self, an audience of one. In this course, writers will learn how the epistle (i.e., letter) is a mode of writing that can apply to poetry. We will approach the epistolary poem as a hybrid text written either to an indistinct or very specific person or thing. By exploring perspective and audience in the epistolary poem, we will generate poems in unbounded ways, invite in the strange and excessive to our work, balance “facts” and feelings, and even begin producing a poem series that can be used to pattern full-length works and chapbooks. Because the epistle is a highly adaptable mode of writing, writers of all genres and skill levels are welcome. In this workshop, we will revise poems you bring from home and discuss avenues for future revision and expansion. Please bring at least one poem written to another person, as the workshop will incorporate strategies for both revision and generating new writing. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend; workshop writing you bring from home.

Every poem is a living thing, an experiment in feeling and image, an exploration of psyche, an artist’s creation—a perfect example of crystalized subjective experience. Because the eye of the critic (and journal editor) is notoriously subjective, it is impossible to predict what they will love or hate. But it is possible to polish your poems as best you can and to avoid common craft choices that many editors have historically found distasteful. In other words, to publish work in literary journals, it is important to revise your poems meticulously so that it is their content and not their craft that an editor passes judgment upon. In this workshop, we will discuss concrete revision strategies, with an eye toward identifying your personal poetic values and developing a revision methodology based on them. Craft topics that will be discussed include beginnings and endings, diction, register, line breaks, titles, image and image progression, and form and content. We will revise poems you bring from home and discuss avenues for future revision and expansion. By the end of the course, writers will have developed a toolbox of revision techniques that they can apply to their poems to make them as “clean” as possible for editors’ eyes. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend; workshop writing you bring from home.