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. Throughout the semester, you will work on creative exercises, some completed in class and some as homework assignments. The exercises will be evaluated on their thoughtful and creative attempts to respond to a task. You will write a one-page response each to two poems and two stories of your choice printed in the textbooks. In other words, you should explore what the poem teaches you about line breaks, imagery, voice, and tone, and what the story teaches you about point of view, plot, setting, and theme.