The Poetry program helps students discover their own voices as poets and develop their craft.  Graduates of the program are grounded in the history of poetry and poetics and are familiar with a wide range of approaches to writing. The gateway courses in the major are Foundations in Creative Writing and Poetry Workshop: Beginning. From there, students are poised to begin a sequence of workshop-style classes progressing from Poetry Workshop: Intermediate through Poetry Workshop: Advanced.  Students also take a Craft Seminar and literature courses including required courses in two historical periods: pre-20th-century poetry (such as Shakespeare or British Romantic Poetry); and 20th-/21st-century poetry (such as American Modernism, Williams & Moore, Poetry and Jazz, Contemporary American Poetry, or Experimental Women Poets). Students have a wide range of literature electives (on various topics and authors) to choose from as well, such as Blake to the Beats, Queer Poetry, Poetry of Diversity, Eastern European Poetry, and many others. Examples of Craft Seminars include Hybrid Poetics, Poetry Translation, Literary Collage and Collaboration, Poets’ Journals and Letters, and more.

A two-part capstone experience completes the major. First, Poetics, taken in the Fall semester of junior or senior year, combines the writing of poetry with the study of poetic theory as articulated by such thinkers as Aristotle and by poets themselves through the ages. Poetics is followed by the Undergraduate Thesis Development Seminar, normally taken in the Spring semester of the senior year. In this small, seminar-style course, students write a chapbook-length thesis of poems. In accordance with the Department’s commitment to interdisciplinary, cross-genre contexts for writing, students choose two writing electives from a broad and varying selection. Such electives include Creative Nonfiction Workshop, Fiction Writing I, Reviewing the Arts, Writing Comedy, Poetry Workshop: Performance, Literary Magazine Editing: Columbia Poetry Review, and many others. Students also are encouraged to take elective courses in the visual and performing arts, and in New Media.

Upon successful completion of the Poetry program, students will be able to:

• Demonstrate a familiarity with the common language of the discipline of poetry writing.
• Demonstrate a familiarity with how open the discipline of poetry is to new modes of expression.
• Demonstrate an understanding of major movements of the history of poetry and its subgenres.
• Use a variety of techniques, forms, and revision strategies to create effective poetry.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between effective reading and effective writing.
• Perform reasonably close readings of works of poetry by 1) analyzing relevant literary elements in poetry (discursive techniques, themes, forms/subgenres, stylistic choices, or other literary devices common to poetry), and 2) making appropriate reference to relevant texts and contexts.
• Demonstrate a meaningful ability to participate in contemporary conversations on social and cultural change.
• Demonstrate knowledge of the literary marketplace and processes crucial to publishing their writing.
• Apply creative problem-solving, effective written and oral communications, and critical thinking to their preparation for graduate studies, writing-related careers, and other professions.

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