ENG 227 - Intro to Creative Writing - Spring 2014

Creative writing features a tremendous variety of approaches and techniques.  For ENG 227, we'll be examining how to seek out new approaches applicable to our writing goals, and understand the successful writing habits to help us realize these goals, and then effectively present our work to interested audiences.

Major topics for this course include Poetry, Fiction, Life Writing, and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory.

Course Policies - Schedule - Contact Ryan

Teaching Meter in Poetry

Now that you've seen what meter is, let's take a look at how we learn to use it.  This article is useful both for teachers of poetry and for those who would like more practice with hearing meter.

<--Week 12 - Metrical Poems
Meter: Meter in Poetry - Teaching Meter

Meter in Poetry

Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line of a poem.  In a stressed-syllabic language like English, meter is the way we identify and understand the overall rhythm of the piece. 

<--Week 12 - Metrical Poems
Meter: What Is Meter? - Teaching Meter

Mining Poetry from Emotions, Memory, and Sensation

What is the source of poetry?  How do we develop the carefully measured lines of poetry from the nebulous memories and emotions of our lives?  In these exercises, we look at what makes a poem "good," and then practice using these concepts in developing our own poetry.

<--Week 7 - Week 8 - Week 9--> 

Using Figurative Speech - Mining Poetry

Figures of Speech in Poetry

Figures of Speech are used to relate one term or concept using ideas or emotions which wouldn't naturally be used for the original term.

<--Week 7 - Week 8 - Week 9--> 
Using Figurative Speech - Mining Poetry

Poetry Workshops: The Fifty-Point Scale

The poetry workshops will use a fifty-point scale similar to the Fiction Grading Scale.  However, the scale will be customized for poetry - come back soon to see how the specific needs of poetry are incorporated into the numbering system.

Course Grading - Grading Workshop Writing
50-Point Scale - Fiction - Poetry

Sonnets and Villanelles - The Closed Forms

Although the closed poetic forms (e.g. sonnets, villanelles, and ballads) are less common today than they have been traditionally, they provide important insights into the effects of meter, rhyme, and language on the overall tone and rhythm of a poem.  The Fu Jen University Department of English provides a very helpful Description of the Sonnet and Villanelle Forms, revealing the key differences between these forms and the open forms of free verse.

<--Week 11 - Week 12 - Metrical Poems
Sonnets: Themes - Sonnet Form - Closed Forms

Use Specific Details in Your Writing

As you write - particularly as you approach the Symbol section of Introduction to Fiction and Poetry, the details in your piece will play a key role in holding the reader's interest.  You can follow the link to Learn More about using Specificity of Detail to Enhance the Tone and Interest in Your Stories.

1-2-Writing Workshops Online

Writing Sonnets with Meter, Rhythm, and Proper Form

Sonnets, as short as they are, sometimes strike fear into the hearts of poets.  For those unaccustomed to the challenges of writing in meter, they take a bit more work - you find yourself counting syllables and checking stress with nearly every word.  Added to this is the requirement to fit the end rhyme into one of the standard sonnet forms.  Yet because of these challenges, sonnets are also an incredibly useful teaching tool - they help develop an awareness of the interplay between meter and the perceived rhythm of your words.  This exercise will help you develop confidence in building lines which use meter and rhyme together. (see also my post "Sonnets: Poems of Love and Ideas")

<--Week 11 - Week 12 - Metrical Poems
Sonnets: Themes - Sonnet Form - Closed Forms

Sonnets: Poems of Love and Ideas

Sonnets are one of the most popular and yet most challenging of poetic forms.  As a closed form, sonnets follow very stringent guidelines regarding meter, rhyme, and stanza structure.  Yet the real strength of the sonnet forms lies in these guidelines - these short poems are packed with rhythm, and the author can use very slight changes in the form to indicate subtle shades of meaning.  (see also some Exercises in Sonnet Writing).

<--Week 11 - Week 12 - Metrical Poems
Sonnets: Themes - Sonnet Form - Closed Forms

Writing the Idea Poem

The Idea Poem

As we discussed in class today, the idea poem has two major considerations for the writer.  The first is that the idea poem - as a poem - has a poetic advantage in regards to philosophical argument.  Unlike expository essays or journalistic reports, the idea poem can present indelible images which the reader may find more convincing than mere facts and figures.  The second consideration is the corollary to the first - the poem must provide a cogent argument.  The idea poem is centered less around situation or character and more around conveying an intellectual idea to the reader.  This second consideration leads to a major potential weakness for the idea poem as an art - if the reader doesn't believe the poem's argument, the reader may not accept the poem...

Writing Tone

A friend of mine e-mailed today asking about how to teach tone to her students.  And this is a very important question for any writer.  In your stories, physical descriptions, actions, and character details will carry the reader only so far.  Besides understanding and "seeing" the story, the reader needs to feel the story.  This is where tone comes in.

Links to Literary Terms

I had a very good question today about how to know which terms to identify.  Given the snow, we haven't gone over as many of the literary terms and techniques as I would have liked, so I've included a list here of useful websites for literary terms.  As the semester progresses, I will focus in on the literary terms which I find the most important, but you may discover that additional terms are needed to describe the works from The Hopkins Review.

Hopkins Review Essay: Evaluating Poetry

The Hopkins Review essays mark an important departure in the course from our regular focus on writing creatively.  Although the essays may require more research than the poems you've submitted thus far and a bit of a closer analysis than our in-class readings, they should be something to worry you.  I grade the essays on a relatively simple rubric - by following the rubric and the simple tips, you will be able to write a quality essay which reveals important aspects of both the work evaluated and poetry in general.

What is a Setting Poem?

Before I discuss the specifics of setting poems, I'd like to introduce a major concept in poetry which is often overlooked when trying to categorize poems.  Essentially, any poem has elements of every poem.  For example, in Bishop's "In the Waiting Room," it's a narrative poem, but we have the elements of a child-like voice and the setting details surrounding her narrative.  In Larkin's "Church Going," we have a similar effect, but it's a setting poem because the narrative is somewhat less important, but we still have some elements of narrative along with the voice of a man who's detached from religion and church in general.

What is a Voice Poem?

At its heart, a voice poem is about this nebulous term we know as "voice."  The easiest way I've found to think of this is to imagine the voices of people I've met and picking apart the interesting differences that come out.  Unfortunately, this can be harder than it sounds - most of the people we know and hang out with speak the same way we do.  They are interested in the same topics, and they often hold the same views and opinions.  And this is somewhat natural.  Just think about chemistry: we're kinda the lipids in olive oil doing our best to avoid the wrong-headed vinegar peeps in our lives.

How to Start Writing a Narrative Poem

Often, the hardest part of writing a poem - any poem - is starting. There's always the big question of "What do I write about?" This is then followed by "How do I write about it?"

Narrative poems, by their very nature, are somewhat harder to start than other poems. They have two strikes against them - the need for the story and the need to be poetic.

What is a Narrative Poem?

In fiction, we often use this term "narrative" to describe the way a story is told.  In poetry, we use this term to differentiate poems which have a narrative arc from those that don't.  Unlike a Setting Poem, which may simply express the beauty of a place and a moment, a narrative poem tells a story, often with a beginning, a middle, and an end (as in fiction).  The ultimate narrative poem would be the epic poem, such as The Odyssey or The Illiad.