Poets & Writers

If a poem is a self, a collection of poems might be a world. If a poem is a moment, the collection might be a lifetime. Ordering a manuscript is often full of uncertainty and mystery, and yet an effective order can be both the map of a landscape and the landscape itself, the sheet music and the symphony. Order is also an opportunity to beckon, reckon with, mediate, and enhance the relationship between speaker and reader—but how do you decide which poem goes where?

In this two-part workshop, we will talk about the arrangement of a manuscript by thinking in terms of narrative arcs, rhythmic variation, thematic sections, as well as other temporal and spatial patterns and intuitive approaches. Using a few model poetry collections, as well as excerpts from theoretical texts, we will consider how to build tension, momentum, and intimacy through structure. Other features we will explore include proems, epigraphs, collection titles, section titles, thematic gaps, necessary omissions or overlaps, lyric dynamics (speakers, addresses, figures), recurring motifs, and formal patterns.

In our quest for order, we will turn to your poetry manuscripts as object and experience, listening for echoes and modulating their effects. You will come away from this workshop with a fascicle of your own poems (à la Emily Dickinson) and a deeper awareness of the power of ordering—not as finality or packaging—but as an essential practice and place of poetry. Please bring a manuscript in progress or at least twelve of your own poems.