final portfolio

The purpose of the final portfolio is to collect your work in durable, functional form.  Consider it a publication.  I will use your work for teaching and demonstration.  If you can make an edition, for friends and family also, all the better.  The portfolio can be printed, handmade, audio/visual recording, or digital.  If digital, please post a link to our advanced poetry blog.  Here are the elements you should include:

1. The most important component of the final portfolio is a collection of poems.  It's not essential to include every poem you have written this semester: select what you consider to be a strong group or, if appropriate, several strong groups.  The poems should be ordered carefully.  What makes a good opening poem?  What is a good poem to close on?  You can think of the collection in terms of a performance, e.g., a reading for a live audience, or a chapbook for the individual reader.  It's perfectly fine to arrange your poems in small groups, if you have different kinds of poems.  Design your manuscript to accommodate this, e.g., using sections.  Your poetry collection should have a title and should be preceded by a table of contents.  You may include a dedication and epigraph if you wish.  All poems should be revised and at least some poems should be strong enough for publication (on personal or class blog, in college publication, in poetry journal).

2. Critique + poetry map

I ask you to include a 1-2 page critique of your poetry this semester, and to write about where/how you see poetry in your life in the future.  Will you continue to write?  Why?  How?  For whom?  Do you want to perform publicly?  Publish?  In what form?  Do you see yourself continuing to buy poetry books?  Taking writing classes?  Holding workshops yourself?

3. Assessment of reading 

I ask you also to include (1-2 page assessment of your reading in this course, i.e.,

• John Keats, Selected Letters.  Ed. Robert Gittings.  Oxford University Press 2009

Any three books from this list: 

• Caroline Bergvall, Meddle English (Nightboat Books 2011)       
• Jenny Boully, Not Merely Because of the Unknown That Was Stalking Toward Them (Tarpaulin Sky 2011)                              
• Tisa Bryant, Miranda Mellis, Kate Schwartz, Encyclopedia, Vol 2, F-K (Encyclomedia 2010)                                 
• Jorgen Leth, Trivial Everyday Things: Selected Poems (BookThug 2011)      
• Tan Lin, Heath Course Pak (Counterpath Press 2012)   
• Frances Richard, The Phonemes  (Les Figues Press 2012)         
• H. E. Sayeh, The Art of Stepping Through Time: Selected Poems  (White Pine Press 2011)                                                                     
• Kate Schapira, How We Saved the City (Stockport Flats 2012)   
• Bruce Smith, Devotions (University of Chicago Press 2011) 
• Mathew Timmons, The New Poetics (Les Figues Press 2010)    
• Ko Un, Himalaya Poems (Green Integer 2011)
• Dean Young, Fall Higher (Copper Canyon 2011)

Your fifth book (from Small Press Distribution, or otherwise)

Note: Items can be treated as separate parts of the portfolio, but the parts should be in some way connected and all turned in by portfolio due date 5/21, 5pm, at my office CB 528.