You will learn the elements of craft, style, and form as well as effective invention, drafting and revision strategies. You will work on creative exercises in and outside of class that will give you practice using specific techniques and will provide you with the foundations of poems and stories. You will also read and analyze the poetry and fiction of published authors as a way of learning how these writers achieve unity of content and form. The course will be divided into two units, the first devoted to fiction and the second to poetry. Class sessions will be conducted primarily as seminars during which you will share your responses to assigned readings from the text, your creative exercises, and your poem and story drafts.
Students analyze and interpret the artfulness of language and technique in poetry and fiction.
Students write poems, incorporating elements of voice, image, metaphor, and music. Students write short fiction, incorporating elements of plot, point of view, setting, and character. Students assess the effectiveness of their own poetry and fiction. Students revise their poems and stories effectively and efficiently. Students analyze, interpret, and appraise the poetry and fiction of their peers from a sound critical perspective.