The “After” Poem: Finding Poetry in Repetition & Refutation

So many poets have gone before us. They have taken up almost every conceivable theme, and their most memorable lines also take up space in our minds. How, then, can we write something sufficiently new?

One answer is this: we can look for our own poems in the words and works of those who have gone before us. The first part of this workshop will provide examples of poems that deliberately go after other writers’ work, sometimes building their own song around a line that someone else wrote,sometimes riting against a worthy opponent’s verses.

In the second part of this workshop, participants will have a chance to practice the technique of “going after” another writer, either by using repetition of a line or phrase they find intriguing in order to spark their own poem or by writing a poem that refutes a text that they find formidable.

Time permitting, we will share our work with one another to finish the workshop. All participants should come to the session with: 1) one line from another work that they suspect could sprout a poem, 2) one fairly short, fairly famous selection of verse that they can imagine contradicting.