Thursday, March 15, 2007

Andrew Schelling's Poetic Journal Course Description

This fall, Andrew Schelling will teach a course on poetry and journal writing at Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. The biggest difference in this year's course may be its title. After many years of calling his course "The Poem and the Journal," he has now begun to used the term "poetic journal." He has told me that he plans on using For the Time Being as a course text as well. The following is his course description:

Practice of Poetry: The Poetic Journal
A writing workshop. Participants keep daily entries of thoughts, experimental writing, observation, conversation, readings, dreams and study. Readings in an array of chronicles: Japanese writers including Basho, Sei Shonagon and Masaoka Shiki; contemporary Americans who have published poetic journals: Joanne Kyger, Hannah Weiner, Lorine Niedecker, Gary Snyder and others. Questions: What makes a journal shapely? How have others composed cross-genre work on the edge of poetry, essay, fiction and autobiography? What does it mean to write with Time as the key element? Is revision of journal entries a crime or a necessity? Students submit an edited final project of twenty pages, with an introduction.

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