Poetry Workshop: Mail's In - The Epistolary Poem

Week 3 | M, Tu, W, Th, F | CLA Alumni Hall Poetry Room | Ages 18 and up

"I love to write to you - it gives my heart a holiday and sets the bells to ringing."

--Emily Dickinson

The epistolary poem, also called an epistle, is a poem written as a letter, addressed either to a public or private person, but usually never sent. The form dates to the late 1500’s. The writing of letters may be a dying art, but the making of epistolary poems need not suffer the same fate! This workshop will consider epistles by Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan, Pulitzer Prize winners Natasha Trethewey and Claudia Emerson, and other poets, including Richard Hugo, Danez Smith, and Linda Bierds, then focus on the drafting of epistles and subsequent revisions of same, with specific focus on sound, image, sensory details, and the poetic line. Generative (ages 18+)

Class Times

John Hoppenthaler’s books of poetry are Night Wing Over Metropolitan Area, Domestic Garden, Anticipate the Coming Reservoir and Lives of Water, all with Carnegie Mellon UP. With Kazim, Ali, he has co-edited a volume of essays on the poetry of Jean Valentine, This-World Company (U of Michigan P). Professor of CW and Literature at East Carolina University, he also serves on the Advisory Board for Backbone Press, specializing in the publication and promotion of marginalized voices. For nine years, he served as Personal Assistant to Toni Morrison. His poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, New York Magazine, Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, The Literary Review, Blackbird, Southern Humanities Review, and many other journals, anthologies, and textbooks.