Because I Said So: When Ambiguity & Authority Conspire with Jennifer Sperry Steinorth via Zoom
or…What Can Happen When Your Mother Writes The Poem
Who hasn’t written—perhaps too many times to count— the overly-ambiguous poem? We may have attempted to employ ambiguity intentionally, repressing aspects of narrative we wish to avoid, gravities we haven’t yet defined—only to find our readers can’t find the there there.
In this class we’ll examine the relationship between ambiguity & the authoritative posture in poems that successfully leave us guessing. Reviewing work by Terrance Hayes, Valerie Martinez, Mark Halliday, Wislawa Szymborska, Jenny Johnson, Matthew Olzmann, and others, we’ll consider the conditions under which vagaries, omission, repression and contradiction become vehicles for precision, nuance, complexity and paradox. Together we will test the theory that deft deployment of ambiguity is dependent on an authoritative posture, and then explore ways we can integrate such maneuvers into our own writing.
This class is capped at 12 and will be taught on Zoom. You will receive the link as soon as you register for class and in a reminder email the morning of the class. It will be sent to the email address you use to register. Please check your spam folder if you do not receive it within five minutes. Registration is $124 for this 4hour intensive. Please register at
Because I Said So: When Ambiguity & Authority Conspire with Jennifer Sperry Steinorth via Zoom | Hudson Valley Writers Center
The Altman Person of Color Scholarships and the need-based scholarships are free and given on a first come, first served basis for students living and studying in the USA—no more than one every other month. Please notify us right away if your plans change and you cannot attend the class. We will then reopen the slot so another student may register. Please refer to our Scholarships page before registering for Person of Color Scholarship or Need Based Scholarship. Thank you in advance for this consideration.
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth is a poet, educator, interdisciplinary artist, and licensed builder. She is the author of two books, A Wake with Nine Shades (Texas Review Press, 2019), a finalist for Foreword Review‘s Best of Indie Press Award in Poetry and Forking the Swift, winner of the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press chapbook prize in 2010. Her Read, a visual lyric and graphic make-over of Herbert Read’s The Meaning of Art is forthcoming from Texas Review Press in 2021. Steinorth is the recipient of the Connecticut River Review Prize, a Writers@Work fellowship and grants from Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the MFA for Writers at Warren Wilson. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Colorado Review, jubilat, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, Quarterly West and elsewhere. Connect at jennifersperrysteinorth.com.
