Taught by Christopher Nelson / Four Sessions (Tuesdays/Thursdays): May 19, 21, 26, and 28 / 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm / $140.00

In a recent interview with Guernica magazine, poet Claudia Rankine said, “As a writer, I don’t want people spending time thinking, ‘What does she mean?’ I want, in a way, my text to go away. So that the words on the page become a door to one’s own internal investigation.” Evident in her wish is the fact that clear writing is not prosaic; it is illuminating. Similarly, poet Mahmoud Darwish suggests, the more lucidly clear, the more mystery avails itself to us. Yet, while clarity may read effortlessly, it is difficult to create. The aim of this poetry class is to make more possible the writing of powerful poems, and we will accomplish this through an exploration of four types of clarity: (1) narrative clarity: how to establish a clear circumstance and move readers through time; (2) rhetorical clarity: how to construct persuasive arguments and effective imagery; (3) semantic clarity: how to communicate the complexities of a theme; and (4) figurative clarity: how to evoke insight through comparisons. Class time will be given to writing, discussion of exemplary poems, and optional sharing of work. The instructor will be available during office hours for individual conferences and critiques.