It’s difficult to think of a successful poem that remains entirely on the level of the impersonal, a truly memorable and moving poem in which the person of the poet does not enter the poem in some way. But how are we to get the personal into our poems without wrecking them? This workshop examines various strategies for finding what is universal and accessible in what is idiosyncratic and particular, as exemplified in poems from recent books including Brenda Hillman’s Seasonal Works With Letters on Fire, Paul Muldoon’s One Thousand Things Worth Knowing, and John Gallaher’s In a Landscape.

Led by: Troy Jollimore