Poetry of Memory & Child by Jodie Hollander

Our language making is inseparable from our musical sense; as Duke Ellington famously said, "It don't mean a thing (if it ain't got that swing)." In this new course we'll look at our most powerful memories, and how to craft a musical poem by studying some of the basics of metrical and free verse poetry and investigating how sound works within the poetic line. You'll learn how to create an ear-pleasing poetry, with a special focus on tempo, pacing, crafting a line in iambic pentameter and the effective use of line breaks. More broadly, we'll consider how sound works as a gateway to the senses and how musicality creates its own kind of meaning within a poem. This is a course for anyone who wants to make their poetic line more musical, and exercises will be designed to help students draw inspiration from their own experiences, then effectively transform these observations into powerful, singing poetry.