Verbal Roundabouts: Writing With Obsessive Vocabularies December 6, 2008

In this workshop, Faith Barrett will focus on three set forms that work with tightly controlled patterns of repetition: the sestina, the pantoum, and the villanelle. Reading poems by Ashbery, Bishop, Pound, Richard Hugo, Anne Waldman, Albert Goldbarth, and Monica Raymond among others, the class will consider the pleasures and frustrations of these obsessive and exhilarating forms. You'll write some pieces in these set forms and also generate some variant versions of them. Please bring writing materials and also copies of 3-4 prose texts that include some striking or unusual vocabulary.