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CCOG for WR 242 Spring 2024

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Course Number:
WR 242
Course Title:
Creative Writing - Poetry
Credit Hours:
4
Lecture Hours:
40
Lecture/Lab Hours:
0
Lab Hours:
0

Course Description

Focuses on the writing and submitting of poetry for class discussion and analysis in a workshop setting. Introduces the techniques, structures, and styles of established poets. Prerequisites: (WR 115 and RD 115) or IRW 115 or equivalent placement. Audit available.

Intended Outcomes for the course

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

  1. Articulate techniques and strategies a wide range of established poets demonstrate in their work. 
  2. Employ the various techniques and elements of poetry such as imagery, metaphor, line breaks, stanzas, alliteration, assonance, rhyme, meter and/or form to write poems.
  3. Employ self-reflection and techniques for employing the imagination to generate new poems and then to revise the poems, using techniques for “re-entering” or “re-seeing” a piece of writing.
  4. Critique others' poems and use criticism of one’s own poetry and self-reflection to revise one’s own poems through the development of critical thinking and problem-solving techniques.

Integrative Learning

Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.

General education philosophy statement

English and Writing courses align with the PCC General Education philosophy by providing an appreciation of writing and literature from global and personal perspectives. Students in English courses engage the imagination, critical inquiry and self‐reflection, and in the process of doing so, cultivate a more complex understanding of their own culture(s), linguistic/communication practices, and perspectives in relation to others. Because the literary arts lie at the heart of most human cultures, they are essential for understanding ourselves and each other and navigating our differences. Like all artistic practices, Creative Writing allows us to process experience and, in doing so, discover and create meaning. In Creative Writing courses, students produce and revise original writing, workshop their writing and the writing of others, study literature, and learn about editing and publishing. Courses in creative writing empower students to realize themselves as writers. In the process, students nurture and harness their creativity, develop their unique writing voices, and explore interdisciplinary aspects of their craft — connections with art, music, and science, for example. Writing and Literature courses foster a stronger sense of engagement with history, culture, and society. Writing and Literature students develop an awareness of themselves as readers and writers in a global world, and an enlarged understanding of the relationships between language, identity, ideas, scholarship, communication, and transformation.

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Outcomes for this course require working through multiple drafts of several pieces of writing with time to separate the acts of writing and revising; in addition, the reading outcomes require time to read, reread, reflect, respond, interpret, analyze, and evaluate. 

Upon completion of the course, students should be able to:

  • Recognize the value and purpose and power of poetry and how it gives shape to human experience.

  • Read poems by a wide variety of established poets, and be able to read them well. Students may give brief presentations on the poetry of established poets.

  • Recognize the function of basic elements of poetry such as imagery, metaphor, line breaks, meter, lyric forms, alliteration and assonance, rhyme.

  • Demonstrate ability at using images in writing their poems

  • Demonstrate ability at using the concept of “the line” in writing their poems

  • Use their understanding of the elements of poetry to critique others' poems constructively, and receive and use workshop criticism of their own poems.

  • Use techniques for employing the imagination to generate poems.

  • Develop an awareness of the oral nature of poetry.

  • Understand that poetry is a plastic art and emerges through a process which includes revision: “the art is in the revision” (Picasso).

  • Use techniques for “re-entering” or “re-seeing” a poem they’ve written

  • Develop a sense of audience.

  • Prepare and submit manuscripts for publication or performance.

Course Activities and Design

During the term students generally write nine or ten short poems and perhaps keep a reading notebook based upon the reading for the course. A third of the course is typically taken up by discussion of reading and presentation and practice of techniques. The remaining two-thirds of class time is typically creative writing workshop, in which students in large or small groups learn to read aloud and constructively evaluate each other's poems. Some instructors require anonymity while others prefer that all poems be signed. Students typically workshop poems both orally and in writing. All out-of-class writing is generally typed. Other activities may include listening and/or viewing recordings of poets reading their work and/or talking about the practice of poetry, guest poet visits or field trips to readings.  The instructor should spend approximately an hour of conference with each student outside of class.

Outcome Assessment Strategies

The final grade is determined by the appraisal of the student's poems and revisions and participation in and contribution to the workshop process. Regularity of attendance and meeting deadlines for poems and critiques are essential to this process and may figure in to the final grade. Students may be asked to demonstrate their understanding of poetics through journals, quizzes, exams or portfolios. Attendance policies may vary with the instructor.

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues, Competencies, and Skills)

  • abstraction

  • accent

  • alliteration

  • allusion

  • ambiguity

  • American idiom

  • anaphora

  • Anglo Saxon

  • archaic diction

  • assonance

  • audience

  • blank verse

  • clarity

  • compression

  • concision

  • concrete images

  • confessional poetry

  • connotation

  • cover letter

  • denotation

  • diction

  • end rhyme

  • extended metaphor

  • figurative language

  • form

  • formal poetry

  • free verse

  • full rhyme

  • image

  • imagination

  • internal rhyme

  • irony

  • Latinate

  • line

  • lyric poetry

  • metaphor

  • meter

  • multiple submissions

  • narrative poetry

  • negative capability

  • objective correlative

  • paradox

  • personae

  • point of view

  • pre and free writing

  • revision

  • rhythm

  • scansion

  • simile

  • slant rhyme

  • stanza

  • symbolism

  • tenor

  • tension

  • tone

  • turns and leaps

  • vehicle

  • voice

Instructors new to the course should contact the campus creative writing chair, creative writing sub-SAC chair, Comp/Lit SAC chair, faculty department chair, or administrative support person for further information.