Start Date 8/26/18

The form of the poem organizes our sensory and felt experience as we read. It supports and disrupts what the language is saying. The line slows the sentence down. The line makes a dance inside the sentence. The line breaks open the sentence. The line registers what the sentence tried to contain. The line takes a walk as Paul Klee described it in painting. And because the line can make these many moves it lets us do more with words than the sentence with its rules of grammar and conventions of speech can do. The repetition of lines in a poem, its form and body and interruption of space and time, allows for many patterns and connections to weave meanings of their own. Every different kind of line has a music and attitude that enters into what you are writing. These are simple experiments with line that will show you what is possible with the poetic line.

Week 1: Three lines: three poems

Week 2: Choosing a line

Week 3: The emerging line

Week 4: Holding the sentence open

Week 5: When the sentence behaves like a line

Week 6: The line takes a walk