Texts

Main Text:

  • Turco, The New Book of Forms  (bring every time)


Secondary Texts:

  • Oliver, Rules for the Dance
  • Hollander, Rhyme's Reason
  • Strand and Boland, The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
  • Dacey, Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms
  • Padgett, ed., Handbook of Poetic Forms

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he main text, Turco's The New Book of Forms, is strictly informative, and I chose it for that reason.  It is simply--or at least used to be--a bare-boned handbook.  I didn't want any other words to influence or prejudice us about forms too early in the process.  I particularly want us to find a way in all of this of looking forward, and not simply backward.  As we examine forms, I would like to see us discovering a beginning-of-the-century zeitgeist, or spirit of our times, not the times of 19th century England.  More concretely, I would like to see us discovering the spirit of next Wednesday.   

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