This is a course in exploration—through reading, discussion, and writing—of women, spirituality, and the ways in which women express their inner lives in their poetry. According to Marilyn Sewell, who edited Claiming the Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Women's Poetry, much of women's contemporary poetry explores the need to reject the dominant values of our culture and "find a different way," to turn away from "our personal and cultural malaise" and explore our inner lives in order to heal ourselves and the world. In this class, we will use this idea for our exploration of women's poetry, reading and writing poetry about the spiritual and temporal lives of women and the essential ways they interconnect. Students will read the poems in Claiming the Spirit Within, keeping a reading journal as a basis for class discussion of these poems, as well as an inspiration for the poems they will write in response to the topics explored in the book. Student poems will be discussed in small groups, and students will rewrite their poems, submitting a portfolio of original and rewritten poems at the end of semester. We will also produce a book of poems written by students in the class. This course satisfies the Fine Arts requirement. Not regularly offered.
