Drafts and Poets’ Revisions: Reading Class with Sean Singer (via Zoom)

Mondays 7—9 PM on Zoom, October 2, 16, 23, and 30

This four-week class is focused on learning new skills and capacities to revise your work. We will look closely at poets’ early drafts, revisions, and final poems. Revision literally means to “re-see.” We can never revise our lives, but revision opens the possibility to improve any piece of writing.

Revision is perfect and imperfect, so it is a manifestation of larger questions. Creation is the seed, and correction is its counterpoint, the pruning. Revision’s goal is to maintain the poem’s aura—its position in space and time—while making it clearer. Clarity demands the rational mind; the spark of generation demands the emotional mind. Revision is a combination of the two, the wise mind.

Drafts include: Dickinson, Plath, Bogan, Rukeyser, and Bishop, among others.

NB: This class will be taught on Zoom and will be capped at 20 students. It will meet for four Mondays, 7-9 PM ET, October 2, 16, 23, and 30. Registrants will receive the Zoom link to the email address they use to register. It will arrive immediately after registration so please check your spam folder if you do not receive it. It will also be sent the day before class as a reminder. Please review the course policies page before registering for any classes. Please email ask@writerscenter.org with any questions.

The scholarship application for the Altman Person of Color Scholarships, Limp Wrist LGBTQIA+ Scholarships, and the Need-Based Scholarships will be available on May 1 and will be due on May 15 for all summer and fall classes.

Sean Singer was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1974. He is the author of Discography (Yale University Press, 2002), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; Honey & Smoke (Eyewear Publishing, 2015); and Today in the Taxi (forthcoming, Tupelo Press, 2022); and two chapbooks, Passport (Beard of Bees Press, 2007) and Keep Right on Playing Through the Mirror Over the Water (Beard of Bees Press, 2010).

He has a BA in English with honors from Indiana University, Bloomington (1997), an MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis (1999), and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Rutgers-Newark (2013).

He is the recipient of an Artist’s Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems appear in many anthologies including A Face to Meet the Faces, Music’s Spell: Poems about Music and Musicians, Jazz Poems, and Callaloo: The Best of Callaloo Poetry. He was guest editor of Locuspoint: New York City. He has taught creative writing and a variety of interdisciplinary courses at Hunter College, SUNY Binghamton, Northern Arizona University, Barnard College, and Rutgers-Newark. He lives in Ossining, New York.