Thinking Inside the Box: on Form with Nathan McClain via Zoom

While I absolutely believe revision and reading can be taught, probably the only sound pedagogical tool for poetry is imitation.  Writing can be introduced to a person, but ultimately, only poems can teach poetry.  Received forms such as sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, pantoums, and ghazals can understably appear difficult, daunting even, so, in this one-day workshop, participants will closely read, discuss, imitate, and workshop poems that adhere to, as well as rethink, common received poetic forms and conventions.  How do formal poems negotiate the relationship between form and content?  When is a particular formal constraint most appropriate?  When should a poet amend or alter a received form?  My hope is that this class can be a nice, warm greenhouse for new poems.  Participants may read and consider poems by Julia Alvarez, John Murillo, Agha Shahid Ali, Douglas Kearney, William Meredith, and Danez Smith, among many others.