View the archive of my two-hour class and discover Five Things I’ve Learned about the way that great poems work to surprise us, transcend time, and take us to unexpected places.

I’m Kim Addonizio and I’d like to invite you to my two-hour class for writers and readers, Five Things I’ve Learned about the Poem’s Progress.

We all know that poems are more than random thoughts or unvarnished journal entries; they’re works of art that can move and delight us, comfort us in times of sorrow, draw us into shared experiences or show us worlds vastly different from our own. At the heart of poetry there’s an intimacy that transcends time and space.

But how are all these things, marvelous and profound as they are, accomplished?

Billy Collins once said, “The best poems are those that surprise us, that take us to unexpected places.”  I love the idea of movement that implies: a poem takes us someplace we haven’t been before, often someplace surprising – or it gets there in a surprising way.

And poems also promise the reader more than surprise – they promise a kind of intimacy with the writer’s imagination and experience, and a fulfilling of expectations. If a piece is too predictable, we lose interest; too surprising, and it leaves us foundering.

You sit down to work. Your poem is going to have title, an opening, a middle, sometimes more middle, and an ending.  Those are the Five Things. We’re going to talk about all of them; we’ll talk about the power of first impressions, form versus structure, and how to develop your poem from an initial idea or line or image. And since last impressions also count, how to stick the landing like an accomplished verbal Olympic gymnast. I’ll also share a bit of my composition process with you, with a poem or two from my latest book, EXIT OPERA.

I hope you’ll join me. This will be a useful class for everyone who loves poems and wants to explore more about how they are made and why the best ones work. Come prepared to engage with some fine poems, to explore poetic structure, and to leave with ideas and inspiration for your own writing.

See you there!

– Kim Addonizio