We’ve done a bit of a crash course in poetic craft and technique these past few weeks, but, of course, simply following directions doesn’t usually result in amazing poems, the [ … ]

Poetic voice is a complex performance. You may notice when I comment on your poems that I am calling the voice of your poem “the speaker’ instead of “you.’ It [ … ]

If sound is the heartbeat of the poem, perhaps imagery is the musculature of the poem. In The Poet’s Companion, Laux and Addonizio characterize images as “the rendering of your [ … ]

Repetition–of sounds, words, syntax, images–is often the emotional powerhouse of a poem. That is, it is the force that gives the poem a sense of emotional movement. As Laux and [ … ]

Poems tend to intimidate. I wanted you to read the chapters on Self-Doubt and Writers Block because I often find that students, especially beginning students, are apprehensive about poetry. They [ … ]

The stories assigned to you this week are weird, I know. More, they engage with states of mind we may find uncomfortable: hallucinations, psychosis, otherworldliness, dream. Most likely these are [ … ]

As noted last week, characters must be complex. All of the stories you read for today are from a first-person point-of-view (even “Girl,’ which at first seems to be in [ … ]

Characters are the lifeblood of conventional fiction. The most exciting plot will fail to engage your readers if your characters are flat. Instead, you want to write complex characters, and [ … ]

I’m sure that many of you are eager to begin the fiction unit of the course. But before we start our stories, we need to remember what constitutes a “story.” [ … ]