Here are the books that we'll be reading in my Fall 2007 classes:
MFA Craft & Theory of Poetry: First Books
Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems, ed. Susan Grimm
case sensitive by Kate Greenstreet
Swimming the Witch by Leilani Hall
leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess
Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky
Miracle Fruit by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Subject to Change by Matthew Thorburn
New (American) Poetry
Small Knots by Kelli Russell Agodon
Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane by Nin Andrews
Becoming the Villainess by Jeannine Hall Gailey
M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A by A. Van Jordan
Drift of the Hunt by Craig Paulenich
Here, Bullet by Brian Turner
I am so excited about these lists, and I'm glad that I have the details in time for my students (and future students) to buy these fantastic books at AWP.
Now on to less exciting tasks of the day.
Charleston gratitude and overdue update
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10 comments:
Cool craft and theory course! I'm actually teaching a similar course right now.
We need to compare notes (and I need to read your books...for future class adoptions).
This quarter I used the following books:
Major Jackson's "Hoops"
Barbra Jane's "Poeta en San Francisco"
Quan Barry's "Asylum"
Alice Notley's "Descent of Alette"
David Lee's "The Porcine Canticles"
So far so good. This past week I had my students write a table of contents for the manuscript they hoped to put together as well as an abstract. It was a very interesting experiment. If anything, it made them more conscious of how other writers put books together.
Oops. Misspelled Barbara. :D She'll kill me if she knew.
That's an awesome list, and what a cool assignment re: the TOC. I may have to steal that. ;)
See you next week!
Hi Mary,
I'm glad to be in your class -- and in such classy company!
I wish my MFA program had had a course focused on how to put a manuscript together -- I don't remember anyone even discussing it, really. What a great idea...
Matt
A book is such a tricky thing to visualize, isn't it? Looking at all these scattered pieces of paper . . . thinking, "well?"
I've had many conversations with poeple about putting manuacripts together, but never a class, or a group. That would have been an interesting class to have taken.
A couple first books I'm currently reading and enjoying:
Jaswinder Bolina, Carrier Wave
Joshua Kryah, Glean
Nancy Kuhl, The Wife of the Left Hand
Wayne Miller, Only the Senses Sleep
The TOC assignment's all yours. ;-)
I photocopied a bunch of TOC's for their amusement. It was quite illuminating. I also had them read their TOC's like they were poems.
I have to say I've been pretty disappointed by Ordering the Storm so far. I'm only halfway through it, but only one of the pieces has really provided me with good ideas yet. The others were either too personal or too vague (or just too much about how tough it is to order manuscripts--I sympathize, but once they've established that, I'd expect them to PROVIDE A FEW ANSWERS if they were good enough to get into the book).
I'm honored to be in such good company! Almost all of your books would be on my dream student-reading-list...
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