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UofA Poetry Center

Member since Dec 14, 2023

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$Image: Saturdays, September 28th, October 5th and 12th, 2024, 1:00PM-3:00PM Meetings will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students. General registration will open on Tuesday, August 13th at 10:00AM. I hope you’ll join me in a focused exploration of mythopoetics, a subject I have personally delved into—sometimes by assignment and sometimes by wandering along the way into discovery—for many years. Mythopoesis offers poets an approach to material that is “too hot” or “too close” to handle directly. It creates a framework that offers us the perspective we may need to write a particular and perhaps challenging poem. Mythopoetics is not a poetic genre but a mode of writing, an approach to the world we live in, but refracted through the lens of our inherited stories. Together we’ll consider what “mythopoesis” does and what we think of it by reading two of the great long poems written by women in the 20th century: H.D.’s Trilogy (Part 1, “The Walls Do Not Fall”) and Gwendolyn Brooks’ “In the Mecca.” We’ll discuss them both for meaning and method. What does mythopoetics add to a poem, and what does it make possible for the poet to explore? The answers—like the questions—will likely be inconclusive, multiple, and open-ended. I ask each of you to bring a perspective that amplifies our thinking about the relevance of myth to art today. We’ll spend two of three sessions discussing the notion of mythopoesis, and the two poems. The last session we’ll devote to your questions, concerns—and the poem(s) / prose poem(s) you’ve written for the class over the three weeks we will have worked together! We’ll undertake, each of us, a “hero’s journey” into the mythic mind, the “collective unconscious,” and we’ll share our discoveries and questions, as well as a poem or two. I’m excited to see what we’ll find! Cost: $150 People: Cynthia Hogue$