Online poetry course - Robert Pinsky

[just mercedes]

https://www.edx.org/course/bux/bux-arpo2...oetry-1565

Free from Boston University, starts end of September. I'm Justmercedes there.

[ellajam]

Thank you. I'm going to give it a try.

[Leanne]

Pinsky is good. Free is good. Free Pinsky is awesome.

[ellajam]

Not much to lose here. The site says it will take about 80% of waking hours and something like 63% of your dreaming hours.
I doubt I'll be that devoted but why not at least start?

[Todd]

I bought Pinsky's book Singing School a couple of months back. It would be fun to go through parts of the book with the author.

We'll see, thanks for posting this Mercedes.

Free is a fairly cool incentive.

[just mercedes]

I'm glad you're interested - see you there! I just finished one with the Uni of Iowa Writers Workshop, and have started another, in prose, with Brown University. Keeps me out of trouble.

[Tiger the Lion]

Thank you so much Mercedes, I'm in.

[billy]

i'd give it a shot but there aren't enough hours in the day for me to do it justice.

[just mercedes]

Did anyone else do it? I just finished today - feeling a bit flat now. Nothing to do but write.

[ellajam]

Nope, I signed up but then when the time came I was overwhelmed with other stuff and let it go.

[milo]

I took the one that preceded it on Whitman. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't Whitman.

[just mercedes]

I took the one that preceded it on Whitman. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't Whitman.

I should have taken the Whitman course as well- I just never did understand the way he's revered. I need to learn more about his work before i reject him totally. Like Emily - now I know more about her I can reject her, knowing why I do.

[Erthona]

Whitman I suppose is difficult in some ways but worth the struggle (although being from NZ and not being steeped in the history from a young age might hinder you). I think there is justification behind why he, as you say, is revered. I took a class on both he and Dickinson. Dickinson for what she does is pretty good, it's just she does not do much. Whitman brings not only the emotional and historical America at the time, but also the awe of the physical land and all that it encompasses. There is no doubt that Whitman is difficult because he is so rooted in that time period even though the human interaction is transcendent. I think if Dickinson were a live and writing today, with her innate intelligence, command of the short form (great for ADHD), and focus on the (for lack a better term) sweeter emotions, she would have been very popular (of course popular does not equal good). Personally I think what she did was closer to a Japanese haiku/senryu than any of these American haiku/senryu of today.  

I'll leave you this cautionary tale

dale


Emily, the death of me

“Because I could not stop for Death,”
he would not stop for me,
refusing pleas for some more time,
he took unwilling me.
So please take heed my mortal friends,
yield your foolish pride,
and if you greet him properly,
he just might let you slide.

  –Erthona

[milo]

Whitman is an endless blowhard with some great lines. Whether it is worth the effort to read it all for the occasional reward i will leave up to the individual.