Writing By Writers...

About The Class: The poetic line has become, through our centuries of written poetry, a fundamental aspect of poetry, but we know that arranging language into lines doesn’t automatically make a poem. The poetic line is distinct, because its composition is intentional, determined by a combination of qualitative and quantitative characteristics. But what are these characteristics, and how might you make more deliberate choices of diction, rhythm, and syntax to shape your poem’s most felicitous lineation? With these guiding questions, we will look deeper into the poetic line: its origins, its transformations, its functions, and its possibilities. With the guidance of a few exemplary poems, we will discuss the relationship between line and the poem as a whole, as well as line’s relationship with syntax, considering the line’s various qualities and functions. The aim of this class is to deepen our understanding of the poetic line and make more confident choices of lineation in our own poems. About The Faculty: Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, The Maybe Bird, and served as the Associate Editor of When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. She is the recipient of a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, was a Wallace Stegner Fellow, and holds a PhD in Literary Arts from the University of Denver. Foerster currently teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop, Institute of American Indian Arts, and as visiting faculty at the Michener Center at UT Austin. A Mvskoke citizen, she lives in San Francisco.