Curated Poetry Collection

Some people like to think of the music they listen to as the soundtrack of their lives; this assignment asks you to collect five poems, like a playlist or album, that interact with each other to inform your ideas about a theme, topic, experience, relationship, dream, etc.

Part of learning to read poetry is learning to see how poems are always in conversation with other written words; this assignment is designed to trace some of those associations and echoes and collaborations.

In the same way a well curated playlist considers how one song builds into the next, you will need to choose poems that work together to create one whole collection. Think about resonant emotions and ideas, contrasting viewpoints, complementary voices. When you are finished, your collection should be your go-to document of whatever theme or experience or relationship you have chosen.

Here are the basic steps and requirements for this course project:

1. Journal 1 - Think about your collection strategy. What theme or experience will tie your collection together. Are you going to choose poems about family, about a relationship, about death, about growing up, about home, about the future ...? Anything goes; just make sure your collection is specifically oriented.

For example, if you choose to collect poems about love, that is too general a topic and will leave your collection as messy and jumbled and random as your junk drawer. Instead, turn that big word "love" into an active sentence: "Love brings dead things to life." Or "Lost loves will haunt you until you lay them to rest." Use this journal to explore one or two ideas. Write 1-2 pages, double-spaced on your thoughts.

2. Journal 2 - For each of the poems in your collection, you will have to explain what it means and how it connects to your collection. The idea is to have your own commentary and analysis paired with the text of each poem so that someone reading your collection will have a sense of reading one complete work.

For this blog, choose one poem to do a detailed close-reading analysis (1-2 pages, double-spaced). You will not have to go into this detail for every poem in your collection, just this one; so, make sure it's a good poem that really works for your collection.

3. Journal 3 - By now you should have a pretty good sense of what your collection will be. And hopefully by now you will also have seen that so many poems come from the poet's strong association with an experience or observation of an object or an image.

So, for this blog, write about the first thing that comes into your head when you think about your collection theme. If, for example, you have a collection of poems about home, then what enters your head when you think about home?

Maybe it's a dinner table full of food and surrounded by people; write everything you can think of when you imagine that table. Ask yourself why that entered your head, what it might mean, where those associations come from. The idea here is to trace your own associations and build your own language for making sense of your own experiences. (1-2 pages, double-spaced)

4. Final Project - Your final collection should include all five poems, a 1-2 page introduction, and your commentary on each of the poems. Note: At least one of your poems must be from off the syllabus.