Lit Fest 2025

William Carlos Williams said, "A poem is a machine made out of words," and this is a course in mechanics. We'll look at a few of the different machines that poets have developed over the millennia—and why they still purr and hum—then use the late, great Robert Fitzgerald’s method to mark them up. This course is for anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the nuts and bolts of how metrical poems (and free verse, which is also a set of forms) actually work at the syllabic level. Bring pencils... and pliers.