Instructor: Tenney Nathanson
Alumni Meeting Room
$200 + $5 course material fee
Required texts available at Amazon.com, UA Bookstores, or your local bookseller:
Dickinson, Emily. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Final Harvest.  (Back Bay Books, 1964). ISBN: 0316184152
Whitman, Walt. Ed. Malcom Cowley Leaves of Grass: The First 1855 Edition. ISBN: 0140421998.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Ed. Kaplan. Bantam Classics. ISBN: 0553211161.

In Three Poems, contemporary poet John Ashbery writes: "I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave all out would be another, and truer, way."  He might have been thinking of Whitman (who pretty much put it all in) and Dickinson (who didn’t).  In this class we’ll consider several of the major poems by these two germinal, but in many ways antipodal, nineteenth century American poets, close reading the work while remaining attentive to some of the ways these two very different writers might enable current poetry writing (say, our own), just as they’ve influenced much twentieth century poetry.  What did Whitman and Dickinson do, and what might it allow us to do?  We’ll pay some attention, as well, to the ways these writers engaged the politics and culture of the antebellum and Civil War United States in which they wrote; but our principal focus will be on a close reading of the poems attentive to their characteristic details.

Tenney Nathanson is the author of the critical study Whitman’s Presence: Body, Voice, and Writing in Leaves of Grass¸ (NYU, 1992, rpt. 1994), the book-length poem Home on the Range (The Night Sky with Stars in My Mouth) (O Books, 2005) and the poetry collection Erased Art (Chax Press, 2005). His poems and essays have appeared in such journals as Raritan, Contemporary Literature, Jacket, Kenning, Social Text, Antennae, Kiosk, EOAGH, RIF/T, The Los Angeles Review, Ironwood, and Caterpillar.  Nathanson is currently at work on a book-length poem, Ghost Snow Falls through the Void (Globalization) and a critical study of the contemporary poets John Ashbery, Leslie Scalapino, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Norman Fischer, and David Shapiro.  He lives in Tucson, where he teaches American poetry and, from time to time, creative writing in the English Department at the University of Arizona.

Wednesdays, February 13 - March 26, 6:15 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.
Instructor: Geraldine Connolly
Alumni Meeting Room
Required texts available at: Amazon.com, UA Bookstores, or your local bookseller:
100 Great Poems of the Twentieth Century, edited by Mark Strand. ISBN: 0393058948
$200 + $5 course material fee

What makes a poem impossible to forget? This workshop will focus on writing assignments aimed at freeing the imagination to generate new poems. The models will come from an anthology, 100 Great Poems of the Twentieth Century, edited by Mark Strand. Topics will include how structure and word choice affect meaning, the element of surprise, the tone of a poem, its texture of feeling and arrangement of images. Both experimental and traditional poems by the finest writers of the 20th century will provide examples of what makes memorable writing. Revision will be discussed as well, focusing on the poem’s movement: its central tension, its patterns of thought, play of mind, its strategy of argument, selection of imagery, its structure and diction.

Geraldine Connolly is the author of The Red Room, Food for the Winter and Province of Fire. For seven years she served as executive editor of Poet Lore. She has been awarded fellowships from the Maryland Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her poems appear in several anthologies including Poetry 180: A Poem A Day for American High Schools; Sweeping Beauty: Poems About Housework; The Practice of Peace and Montana Women Writers: A Geography of the Heart.

POETRY SPROUTS

Tuesday, March 25 - April 29, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Mrs. Tiggy Winkles Toy Store (4811 E. Grant Rd.)
Instructor: Jennifer Casale
$60

A weekly, interactive poetry workshop geared towards children 4-6 years old. Students will read poems, participate in writing exercises and creative movement activities involving music, and write their own poems. Each student that attends all workshops will create their own chapbook that they can take home at the end of the course.

Jennifer Casale, a poetry fellow at the University of Arizona, will be graduating with an M.F.A. in May. She received her B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 2004. In addition to teaching several undergraduate courses at the UofA, she also works with the Environmental Education Exchange teaching recycling and water conservation at local elementary schools.

FROST AND HIS LEGACY
Registration Deadline March 21st

Saturday, March 29, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Alumni Meeting Room
Instructor: John Wright
$100 + $5 course material fee
Required text available at Antigone Books or UA Bookstores: Robert Frost: Selected Poems (New York: Gramercy Books, 2001).

One of the most popular as well as influential of American poets, Robert Frost was also integral to the founding of the Poetry Center. In 1960, Frost dedicated the original building, and it was there that Stewart Udall extended the historic invitation to read a poem at Kennedy’s inauguration. Our permanent collection features ephemera from Frost’s visit to the Center as well as items donated by Stewart Udall that record Frost’s contribution to JFK’s inauguration. With the opening of the Center’s new home, we thought it apt to pay a birthday-week tribute to this poet, who was born March 26, 1874.

In this one-day class, we’ll look first at the overall arc of Frost’s career, paying close attention to his various poetic phases as well as his most significant individual poems.  In the afternoon, we’ll expand our scope, considering not only his poetic influences, but also his own continuing influence both in Britain and America. From Whitman and Dickinson to Sandburg, Heaney, and even Creeley, we’ll trace the “plain-spoken” tradition as it has developed through the twentieth century and on into the twenty-first. Please join us for an exploration that should delight both novices and seasoned appreciators of good poetry alike.

A westerner by inclination, John Wright has lived in the Midwest, the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, and along the western slopes of Rue St. Georges in Paris and Shirdale Close in Maesycwmmer, Wales. His poems, essays, and interviews have appeared in a wide range of journals, from Mule to Chicago Review, and he has taught at an equally diverse assortment of universities, colleges, secondary schools, and art schools, both in the U.S. and abroad. Educated at Principia College and University of Chicago, he currently works as a teacher and freelance editor while dividing his time between the canyons of southeastern Arizona and the valleys of South Wales.




Mondays, March 31 - May 5, 6:15 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.
Instructor: Drew Burk
Alumni Meeting Room
$150 plus $40 material fee

Special Offer! Bring a friend and you both get 20% off course registration. (Material fees are not discounted.)

In this course writers will explore both traditional and non-adhesive bindings. The first four weeks will be spent trying out several different binds, a variety of supported and non-supported sewings. These early weeks will also include readings and non-workshop discussions of written work. The final two weeks will be dedicated to placing each person's selected work into their own handbound text.

Drew Burk is a writer, bookbinder, painter and musician. He co-founded and co-edited spork magazine, a handbound journal that received favourably reviewed in Poets & Writers Magazine and on Portal del Sol and is now editor and bookmaker for spork press.  He is one of the minds and a pair of hands behind the Housewarming Festival POST & BIND.

**Please note all material fees transactions will be handled through the course instructor. You do not need to include this fee in your class registration payment.**


Saturday, April 12 and 13, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Instructor: Dana Elkun
Alumni Meeting Room
$100 + $5 material fee

Northrop Frye offered writers a beautiful and practical tool when he suggested that each season of the year is associated with a different literary tone.  In this weekend writing course, we’ll move metaphorically through an entire year, reading and writing poems in every season.  We’ll reach beyond the ready images (hot sun, white snow) to discover the expansive tonal range we live through in a year.  Each day, we’ll read example poems in a variety of styles.  Then we’ll do a series of writing experiments designed to generate new poems and to draw us out of our habitual seasons.

Dana Elkun received a BA from Stanford University, did fieldwork and study of West African literature and performance at University of Ghana, and received an MFA in Creative Writing at University of Washington.  She currently teaches writing at University of Colorado and Naropa.  In addition to teaching undergraduates and adults, Dana has also worked with children in foster care and in juvenile detention.   Her poems have appeared recently in Beloit Poetry Journal, Bellingham Review, Crab Creek Review, MARGIE, and Puerto del Sol, among others.

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University of Arizona Poetry Center | 1508 East Helen Street (At Vine Avenue) |Tucson , AZ 85721-0150
Phone: 520-626-3765 | Fax: 520-621-5566 | email: poetry@email.arizona.edu