The Evergreen Forum

WHO DOES IT AND WHY?

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In this course we will ask ourselves how the two forms of writing -- prose and poetry -- feed each other, and why an author may use both. But first, what are these two forms exactly? Prose comes in chunks or blocks we call paragraphs. It has sentences of varying length. It has neither regular meter nor rhyme. While poetry can have rhyme and regular meter, it does not have to, but it takes beauty of sound, picture, or image as its clear purpose. It tends to catch a mood or a moment of reflection rather than a sweep of time and history, but the reflection can be about the sweep of time and history as, for example, in Shelley's "Ozymandias".

In today's world, as the formal properties that distinguish prose from poetry become less distinct, what separates the use and feel of the two kinds of writing? This question will guide us as we conduct a kind of built in experiment: how do poetry and prose by the same author differ and is prose by poets in any way different from prose by those who never write poems?

We will begin by looking at small pieces of prose and poetry by our two earliest, greatest English authors, Chaucer and Shakespeare. We will then proceed to some of the Romantic poets. After some standard introductions of well known classics, we will look at a raft of contemporary writers who write in both modes: Donald Hall,

T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath,  Diane Ackerman, Alicia Ostriker.

Class members will contribute some three to five pages of material from an author of their choosing to present to the group.

Required texts: A course pack, photocopied by the office of the Princeton Senior Resource Center, from which we will select readings at each session.

Leader: Liz Socolow is an award-winning poet who has taught at all levels from the third grade to senior citizens and for the New Jersey Council for the Arts.

Tuesday: 10.00 a.m. to noon,

8 weeks beginning September 25.