IMF 51702 Poetry: The Sonnet L W

Instructor

Anothai Kaewkaen

Class Type

Literature & Workshop

Course Description

Scorn Not: The Sonnet, The Sonnet Collection, and Sonnets in Collection

If no other received form has accrued such bad press over its long history (Wordsworth was already defending it in his day), it's because no other received form has been so enduringly popular, so stubbornly perennial, and often so painfully conventional, as the sonnet. In this course, we will survey examples of contemporary sonnets and sonnet collections as we seek to understand what makes these fourteen(?)-line poems work, and how artists across different schools and backgrounds have reinterpreted the form. We'll analyze winners of the prominent Nemerov Sonnet Contest in our discussion of what constitutes "good" contemporary sonnets (and what a contemporary sonnet even is), develop a class criteria for their assessment, and explore the form itself as a field where both tradition and experimentation play. Finally, through a series of workshops, we ourselves will wander, like so many distinguished writers before us have, "the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground."