you could create small workshop groups

you could use this to grade

OMG this is exactly what i'm thinking of

the idea of "fixing problems" isn't right for workshop. same framework, different vocabulary.

This kind of closing the loop is an improvement on workshop as it currently exists, because as much as we say revision is important, no one who comments on a peer's piece during workshop sees or knows how the student responds to it in the piece. So the revision part, like the writing, is a mystery.

that's where the workshop comes in

whereas creative writers love to make more work for themselves.

to keep track of what you or other people have changed. Absolutely INSANE that creative writers don't have a way of doing that in their workshops.

This list is incredibly useful because it goes so far beyond "happy" or "sad" (although those are on here). This is one of the things poetry can do that few other art forms can: express really subtle and various emotions! So in your reading of a poem, it's worth looking very carefully at what kind of tones are there.

These are great to use, but be sure to check that they're correct after you submit them, because there are often extra periods or little errors like that.

"Works Cited" means the same thing as "Bibliography." So what you're making an an ANNOTATED Works Cited page. After each citation, you'll place your analytical summary. Citations + analytical summaries = annotated bibliography.

This is the format you want to use for your citations.

I agree with this assessment. When they say MLA format "keeps you from getting kicked out of school," they just meant that by always citing the sources you got the information from, you reduce the chance of accidentally plagiarizing.

It basically is just a set of rules to follow.

This isn't relevant to this particular assignment

This term, "citing sources," is used all the time, and all is means is telling where you got the information from.

If you have a STEM or other type of major, there are other, different ways your papers are "supposed" to look, established by other, different organizations (not the MLA), but for this class, you'll be using the MLA's guidelines.

So this is a way that your paper is "supposed" to look and a way that the sources you use (like The Daily, for example) should be referred to.

Note the enjambment in this line. Why do you think Clifton chose to enjamb this line?

why do you think clifton doesn't use capital letters in the title of this poem--or in the poem itself?

Poetry is as much about listening as it is about reading, or writing!

Contemporary poetry, as we've discussed, doesn't usually have rhyme or meter.

this is worth thinking more about. What elements of poetry make a poem impossible to paraphrase? It's much simpler to paraphrase prose!

you can stop reading here.

three-line stanzas, and enjambment, work together to create a sense of tumbling forward. If the lines were end-stopped and the stanzas were four lines, it would feel more stable, and less like a journey.

you don't need to know these terms, but you DO need to know why a writer might use a 2-line stanza and why they might use an 8-line stanza

so if you're writing without a set meter or rhyme, your stanzas can be any length you want. and you can vary that length throughout the poem.

you don't need to do this, but it is something interesting to think about

end stops slow down a poem; enjambment speeds it up

I personally think that James Wright's poetry is sexist and racist, but he's an important Ohio poet who a lot of people love, and this particular poem provides a good example of using end-stops effectively.

that's one of the effects enjambment can have.

click on this link so you know what she's talking about. See how almost every line in this poem ends with punctuation? That means all those lines are end-stopped.

for example, the final line in the excerpt is END-STOPPED. "with lice and maggots." That ends with a period, so it's like saying, Game Over! But any piece of punctuation at the end of the line--a comma, a dash, an exclamation point, etc.--makes a line end-stopped.

as we've discussed, the "units of meaning" in poems are lines and stanzas; in prose, the units of meaning are sentences and paragraphs.

These are helpful because they're about how the poem works, formally and linguistically.

We won't be following this procedure in this course because the workshop will be online.

another way of thinking about this is dialogue vs. exposition. Your characters don't always need to have a conversation about something, but sometimes you need the conversation (dialogue) to express something about them or what they're doing. If "hearing" the characters in dialogue isn't important, you could summarize their conversation in exposition.

Notice how micro-level decisions, like sound and word choice, are important in revising fiction, not just poetry.

look at how she considers the workshop and professor's comments, but lets her own sense of the poem and what it needs make the final verdict.

I think it's a bit hard to understand what line she's referring to, or where the stanza breaks are here (or why she decided to split the poem into stanzas on revision)--so just skim this, thinking about how intensely she focused on each individual line in revising. This can be a fruitful way to revise (but it's not the only way).

notice how she lets SOUND, not MEANING, dictate where she goes in the revision. Her thinking about this poem's meaning comes later. Sound is such a special, unique part of how poetry works, and what poetry can do--don't ignore it in your revising!!!

she's talking about how the line with "bomb" is enjambed in a way that feels like the line itself is a bomb dropping onto the next line.

remember that each line, on its own, is a unit of meaning in a poem (like a sentence is in prose).

these are extremely useful questions for revision, but don't feel like you have to have an answer for every single one. It may be useful to focus on one of these "elements" in your revision, rather than on all four.

these criteria could be very useful to keep in mind when workshopping peers' writing.

this can be so beneficial to a piece of writing--to literally "re-see" it.

this part of the post, and the information and instruction about workshopping that follows, is the most important part of the post

makes me think of Elbow's piece on freewriting--that internal editor can prevent us from writing at all.

this is a thoughtful and important attitude toward rhyming poetry. I encourage you to consider Phillips' suggestion here. The idea behind rhyme in a poem is to add a depth of meaning between the two rhymed words or phrases. If your use of rhyme doesn't do that, consider whether it's worth keeping in the poem--or if you could replace the rhyming words with more thoughtful, meaningful language.

this is the feeling part of Fish's equation--the idea of using some of poetry's unique attention to language and emotion to steer the story.

this is one of the reasons you are writing flash this week--to think outside the boundaries and rules of traditional (and often clichéd) narrative structure.

another diference, of course, is that flash fiction is written in prose, so that the units of meaning are sentences, not lines, and paragraphs, not stanza.

this line is ENJAMBED, because it has no punctuation at the end of it. ENJAMB means "to jump" in French; the line JUMPS into the next time. Enjambing a line gives it a feeling of moving forward.

this line is END-STOPPED, because it ends with a mark of punctuation--the period after "evanescence." ANY mark of punctuation AT THE END OF THE LINE means that the line will be end-stopped--it can be a comma, dash, exclamation point, whatever--as long as it's punctuation. End-stopping gives a feeling of coming to a STOP.

look at how she zeroes in on this ONE word and considers very closely why Dunn might have used it.

this section is somewhat less important than the others. I want you to focus on how the poem is MADE even more than what it may mean!

this symbol indicates a line break. It means that "I repeated it" is one line and "to everyone I knew" is another separate line.

notice how much HAPPENS in every single line of this poem!

THIS is an example of irony. It's not exactly humor--he MEANS it--but he's working against your expectations of what BEAUTY means.

Many of the TONES of these titles seem humorous or ironic. Let the idea of irony, humor, comedy, sarcasm, etc. be on the table when you read a poem. Poems, especially contemporary poems, tend to be quite ironic.

the idea of TONE is extremely important in a poem. As you read a poem, ask yourself, what is the MOOD of this poem? How do you know?

This section is very important. And it offers excellent advice that can be used BEYOND reading poetry. It's a field guide to close reading!

the SPEAKER of the poem is like the NARRATOR of a story: it's the person/thing/being who is SAYING the poem. That's not always the same thing as the person who wrote the poem--just like the narrator of a story isn't necessarily the same "character" as the story's real-life author.

What type of listening do you need to be able to do in order to give a TOTAL RESPONSE to a poem? (Considering an answer to that would make a great blog post!)

this is what I mean when I say reading as a creative writer!

this is a great way to think about close reading--as a TOTAL RESPONSE to a poem.