Poetry Master Class: Seeing Things

Instructor: Marianne Boruch
Date: Saturday March 19
Time: 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Location: Marian University/Marian Hall #205
Cost: $57 nonmembers, $39 members, $33 student members/teacher members/senior members/military members

The 18th, early 19th century poet William Blake was pretty offhand about it eventually, those angels he saw in a tree when he was nine, and again at fourteen, the ones just standing around among the threshers in a field, and that chat he had with the angel who served as Michelangelo’s favorite model for figures in his frescos. Our goal in this workshop is more modest and earthbound: to see things, the odd, everyday stuff–the beloved particulars, I call them–and follow them, not one’s pre-digested and stubborn intention, into poems or short prose meditations on the page and in the air.

Which is to say, the work of our workshops will concern habits of attention, a “habit of art” as fiction writer Flannery O’Connor called it. Our eye will be on hard image and its wily, rewarding connection to more reflective, abstract elements in what we write or read, how image makes meaning through verve and precision and surprise. In addition, to aid and abet this seeing through, we’ll be doing a few “imagery workshops,” exercises to deepen our habits of observation and our patience as well, trusting those images to trigger whatever flashes and fevers–with any luck, some solace too. And we’ll do something with scissors to drum up even more trouble.

Blake also said “I can look into a knot of wood until it frightens me.” Do we want to go there too? Sure. Maybe. I hope.