Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five Canon Approach is a comprehensive alternative to the full-class workshop approach to poetry writing instruction. In the five canon approach, peer critique of student poems takes place in online environments, freeing up class time for writing exercises and lessons based on the five canons of classical rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.
Table of Content
1. It Doesn’t Work For Me: A Critique of the Workshop Approach to Teaching Poetry Writing and a Suggestion For Revision
2. Rhetorical Theory as a Basis for Poetry Writing Pedagogy
3. Towards an Art of Poetic Invention
4. Some Specifics about the General: Arrangement
5. Elements of Poetic Style
6. Poetry Writing Instruction and the Forgotten Art of Memory
7. Delivery: Bringing the Words into the World
8. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackboard Page
9. Conclusion
About the author
Tom C. Hunley is an assistant professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books (www.steeltoebooks.com). He received degrees from University of Washington (BA), Eastern Washington University (MFA), and Florida State University (Ph.D.). He has published hundreds of poems in literary journals such as Tri Quarterly, Poetry East, Rattle, Connecticut Review, Exquisite Corpse, and Cimarron Review. His books of poetry include The Tongue (Wind Publications 2004); Still, Thereâs a Glimmer (Word Tech Editions 2004); and My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove Press 2005).