Poems of War and Peace: A Six-Week Close Reading and Generative Poetry Workshop with Emily Leithauser (Zoom)

This course meets 6 Tuesdays from 7:30-9:30 p.m. (ET) on Zoom on November 10, 17, 24, December 1, 8, and 15.

In this workshop, we will turn to poems by writers who experienced or imagined war, and we will ask how poetry can both record conflict and provide avenues for possible peace. Each class will begin with a close reading of canonical and contemporary poems. The second half of class will be devoted to workshopping students’ poems, which might take a more expansive, metaphorical view of war to include internal battlefields and struggles. Together, we’ll ask how poems might envision a more harmonious world.

Course Summary

This workshop is meant to open up a broad range of pathways for further reflection, discussion, and creativity. The poetry of war is a vast topic, and even includes a long tradition, going back to the Ancient Greeks, of poems—sometimes comic, sometimes…