Poetry Center San Jose Presents

“From Appositives to Arpeggios: Pulling out the Stops”  

A Workshop with  

Terry Blackhawk and Judy Michaels 

Followed by a Reading of their Poetry

Saturday, July 21, 2012
 

Workshop:

2pm - 4pm

San Jose State University, Clark Hall, Room 100H

Reading:

Doors open at 5pm, Reading at 5:30pm

Works/San Jose, 365 S. Market Street, San Jose

Beginning writers or students in high school classrooms often ask, “How long does a poem have to be"?  Terry Blackhawk and Judy Michaels will conduct a two-hour craft workshop to address this very question by examining the structure of poems and the element of length in poetry.   Terry and Judy would like to ask how long CAN it be, and will investigate long poems that stretch the possibilities of structure and contain themselves in one sentence. The long poem that builds as, but remains in the form of, a single sentence possesses both the musical and visual power to heighten a poem’s thematic and emotional expressiveness.

Using models from Keats, Whitman, Sharon Olds, William Carlos Williams, Cummings and others, the workshop will lead writers to examine the rebelliousness and rush of long poems; that seemingly natural and unforced, but very intentional way the poem stays within but pushes against the boundaries of structure. 

Terry and Judy would like you to join them as they examine the power of length in poetry as an attempt to push your own writing beyond its limits.   See what happens when you pull out all the stops, and then apply those techniques to the inspiration we find around us!   

To learn more about these talented poets and to read their poetry, please visit the links below:

Terry M. Blackhawk
http://terrymblackhawk.com/

Judy Rowe Michaels
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/judy-rowe-michaels