Instructor: Dorianne Laux
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday
June 17 - 21
2pm - 4pm (EST)
4 sessions ONLINE via Zoom
What makes a poem memorable? Dave Smith says it’s “… a confident use of language which releases feeling and keeps releasing it with repeated readings.” Naomi Shihab Nye says for her it is, “Love and care for elemental details… and a way of ending that leaves a new resonance or a lit spark in the reader or listener’s mind.” We will take a close look at a variety of dazzling poems written by contemporary poets and seek to understand what makes them memorable. Then, we will practice imitation as a striving toward writing our own unforgettable poems.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux’s most recent collection is Only As The Day Is Long: New and Selected, W.W. Norton. She is also the author of The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award. She teaches poetry at North Carolina State and Pacific University. In 2020, Laux was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.