Deep Waters: The Prose Poem Advanced Workshop
with Anna Scotti
Dive deeper into prose poetry.
This generative six-week workshop is offered for students who are familiar with the prose poem style. We’ll plunge right into deep waters! From our very first meeting, students can expect to spend half of each session writing from a specific prompt. Our goal will be to create complex small works that look like prose, but hit like poetry, using all the tools available to us as poets and writers – precision of diction, intensity of emotion, vivid imagery, lyrical language, rhyme, meter, assonance, alliteration, metaphor, and repetition – everything except line breaks and straight narrative.
It’s often said that invention is two percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration. Writing transcendent poetry – like all “invention” – does require discipline and venturing beyond what comes easily. I’ll ask you to post a new or significantly revised poem every week. From the second or third week, I’ll individualize assignments, asking each participant to focus not only on areas of strength, but on areas in which he or she is less adept or experienced. Expect to be pushed and expect to grow!
This class will be highly individualized, emphasizing writing, revising, and rewriting using the instructor’s notes (given orally during class, and in writing in response to wet.ink postings). Students are asked to work at least one hour per week outside of the class meeting times.
You are welcome to enroll in this intermediate/advanced course multiple times – prompts and readings are changed. (If you are interested in working with Ms. Scotti but have not studied or written prose poetry previously, please consider enrolling in her courses, “Both Fish and Fowl: The Prose Poem” or “Warp and Weft: Free Verse Poetry.”)
Zoom and Wet.Ink Schedule
Class will meet for 90 minutes once a week on Saturdays, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, starting October 26th. Each session will begin with a short craft talk followed by chunks of synchronous guided writing, utilizing prompts. We’ll meet back on zoom at the close of the session to compare notes and to talk about goals for the coming week. (In the event that enrollment exceeds six students, the class period will be extended to four p.m.)
Students will be asked to submit a new poem each week, using the Wet.Ink platform. Of course, poems may be “in-progress” and are not expected to be polished and complete. Work should be submitted by 9 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesdays preceding our class meetings.
Students should plan to make comments on a minimum of two other student’s work each week, using Wet.Ink, prior to our zoom meeting on Saturdays. The instructor will also make comments on posted work.
There is no required reading outside of class (other than reading and critiquing a poem by a colleague). However, the instructor will provide one or two professionally published poems each week we’ll discuss during our craft talk and will use for inspiration as we write.
Learning and Writing Goals
Learning Goals
By the end of this six-week course, students will:
- Have a great deal of confidence about the process of writing, editing, and revising a prose poem, and will have a sense of how to judge when a poem is “finished.”
- Have a deeper understanding of some commonly used poetic and literary devices.
- Have experience in offering and accepting supportive, informed critique.
Writing Goals
By the end of this six-week course, students will:
- Have one poem selected to submit to Ms. Scotti for a half-page commentary.
- Have two poems polished and ready to submit to journals for publication, or approaching readiness pending another edit or two!
Weekly Syllabus
Week One: Storms, Skies, and Waterfalls
After a quick round of introductions, we’ll get to work writing, drawing inspiration from the natural world and from a published work.
Homework: Please post a poem to Wet.Ink by Wednesday evening. It’s fine if your work is incomplete or “under construction!” Please read and comment on the work of another student before class on Saturday.
Week Two: Who is the You?
“You” can mean so many things in a poem. Sometimes it’s a distancer for ideas that are deeply personal or difficult to express. Or it can refer to a specific person, or to a group, or just to people in general. We’ll look at the word “you” used in several poetic contexts, and then we’ll write!
Homework: Please post to Wet.Ink by Wednesday evening. It’s fine if your work is incomplete or “under construction!” Please read and comment on the work of at least one other student before class on Saturday.
Week Three: Rhyme and Meter: Silver and Purple, Dapple and Gilt
A successful prose poem can incorporate rhyme to a surprising degree! We’ll explore various types of rhyme used in poetry – masculine and feminine rhyme, dactyl meter, macaronic, slant rhyme, near rhyme, assonance, consonance, alliteration, eye rhyme – and no worries…I provide a cheat sheet! After a brief craft talk, we’ll write!
Homework: Please post to Wet.Ink by Wednesday evening. It’s fine if your work is incomplete or “under construction!” Please read and comment on the work of at least one other student before class on Saturday.
Week Four: Grief Is Just Love with No Place to Go
Loss can make us more sensitive to the beauty and abundance all around us. This week, after a brief craft talk, we’ll draw on personal experience to write about loss – and about beauty, joy, and the celebration of life.
Homework: Please post to Wet.Ink by Wednesday evening. It’s fine if your work is incomplete or “under construction!” Please read and comment on the work of at least one other student before class on Saturday.
Week Five: Personification
Personification was the joy of the Romantic poets – Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley adored it – but Bukowski, Larkin, and Dickinson employed this literary device as well. We’ll talk about personification (the chocolate cake beckoned) and zoomorphism (the storm raged like a lion). Then we’ll start a prose poem utilizing one of these devices.
Homework: Please post one or two poems to Wet.Ink by Wednesday evening. It’s fine if your work is incomplete or “under construction!” Please read and comment on the work of at least one other student before class on Tuesday.
Week Six: Straight Talk and Celebration!
Instead of starting new work today, each student will read aloud a poem that is approaching completion, with a brief “workshop” discussion following each reading. Then we’ll switch gears, and the instructor will offer specific ideas and answer questions about where you might consider submitting your work. We’ll talk about literary journals, commercial magazines, print v. online, paid and free submissions, and contests and competitions. The instructor will provide a detailed critique of the work, with suggestions as to where it might be submitted for publication, following the last class.
Homework: Please email the instructor the poem you would like for her to critique. It will be returned to you with comments, compliments, and suggestions. Please send your email no later than Friday following the last class.
Post-Week Six
Watch for a personal critique of your poem to arrive via email within two weeks of our last class!
Students are invited to re-enroll in this intermediate/advanced workshop an unlimited number of times. Content will be adapted to the balance of new and returning students.
$445.00Enroll Now
Student Feedback for Anna Scotti:
Anna is a brilliant teacher. I will take her course again and again. We learned style and syntax from reading and analyzing poetry and then experimented with those techniques through in-class prompts. She created a safe space to share our work and that process encouraged a lot of growth. I left her class with a series of poems that I’m proud of and a sense of my voice as a poet. Jodi Morton
Anna is a fabulous teacher. She is 100 percent engaged with every writer and extremely supportive of everyone’s individual progress. She knows how to smoothly and effectively run workshops so everyone’s voice is included and raised up. Janice Scudder
Excellent! The course materials were very good and the teacher, gifted. Her feedback on work submitted was very helpful. The students who submitted every week and offered feedback were amazing. Talented writers, every one! Lynne Schilling
Anna was a very good instructor. She is generous with her time and energy in helping students to improve their writing. Anna’s prompts in class were very good and led to lines for new poems every week. She also offered real world experiences with literary magazines and publishing that I felt were very helpful. Jeffrey Shalom
Anna is an exceptional writing teacher who possesses a unique blend of warmth, understanding, and deep knowledge of the craft. Passionate about poetry and its transformation into prose, she is a kind and insightful mentor who leaves no stone unturned in helping students unlock their inner power as writers.
With patience and expertise, Anna helped me edit my poems to their best versions. Her classes are fun, but you will work hard!
Anna shows you how to break a poem down to what she calls “the working parts-” and then she shows you how to use that as inspiration to write your own.
I learned so much working with Anna, and I’ve published four poems since our class together.
