About Bob Haynes
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Daydreams: How Poems Work (10 Weeks)
Instructional Goals
Participants will test new ideas regarding narrative progression, narrative pacing, concreteness of imagery, and sound considerations of length and duration, and will begin to see how - through the use of concrete imagery and techniques of concentration and interruption - resulting poems begin to focus time, even slow and potentially stop time. Over the 10-week course, participants will receive weekly reading and writing assignments that cover such elements as usage, diction, image, music, and form, as well as reaffirm the notion that "poetry" is a process, and that the act of revision is essential to a successful poem. In addition to these familiar workshop goals, this course will also:
Direct students away from abstraction and toward a sensory imagery based on real-world objects and observation. We will collect the language from objects in our daily lives and bring that language into our poems.
Introduce students to the idea that a poem's "true" subject may not be the subject that inspired it, or the subject for whom the poem was originally "about." We will look at Richard Hugo's idea that each poem has two subjects: the triggering subject (that which inspired it) and the true subject (that which the poem is truly about).
Introduce concepts of metaphor-making as avenues toward daydream: creating metaphors using descriptions of the human body, the house, the nest, the shell (spaces that provide human places in which to dwell. We will learn how many of the concrete objects in our lives often have deep psychological significance called archetypes and how we can take advantage of archetypes to help our readers fall into reverie.
Introduce concepts of writing a poetry of opposites, describing, for example, an enormous object via a miniature object, or vice versa.
The Connection of Daydream and Reverie
Psychologists and analysts seek to interpret our nighttime dreams by applying meanings to various symbols. The psychiatrist tells us to dissect our dreams to reveal what they may mean to our waking life. But the same methods cannot be applied to a daydream. Dreams create a narrative and a plot, and set time in motion. Setting time in motion is exactly the opposite of what a daydream does. Our job, if we want to engage in a daydream, is to slow time down, to focus on particular objects or ideas and to interrupt the wilfull progression of narrative and plot.
The experience of a daydream is more akin to having succumbed to the immensity of a thought. Immense thoughts can be triggered by the flight of a honeybee hovering at the edge of a garden or by the metaphorical action of a poem. For our purposes, such a thought is when the reader begins to engage in his or her own history: -whether it be a recollection, reflection, or recovering a buried memory. When the reader's mind begins to wander through the reader's life, this material is added to the subject of the poem. The task for us, as poets in a poetry workshop, is to find triggers for the reader and to guide, purposefully, our readers into this experience of a daydream.
To write a poem this way forces us to forget old ideas about sharing our own experiences, or relating our thoughts about events and people. Our task becomes one of making sure the reader has the experience of a daydream. To do so means that we, as poets, lose control over all the possible meanings that a poem can have for a reader; however, we will gain control over learning to write in such a way that we guide our readers into their own lives. It is in through this experience for the reader that our poems may potentially become memorable.
Suggested Texts:
Week 1: Introduction to class.
Week 2: Review of aethetics.
Week 3: New poem. Rethink old stategies; break habits that aren't working.
Week 4: Elements of sound and line. Do the effects add or detract from the poem?
Week 5: Make metaphorical analogy using the human body.
Week 6: Use objects to disrupt and pause a poem held together with narrative, syntax, or a repetitive rhetorical device.
Week 7: We will take the whole next three weeks putting into practice Bachelard's ideas in-depth, discussing his notions about the development of metaphorical images and his ideas that a poem's "effect" is to draw the reader into the world of daydreaming.
Week 8: Examine the concepts of nook, nest, and shell.
Week 9: Examine the concepts of miniature objects and roundness.
Week 10: What is your aethetic now? Your final exam is to revise your original Statement of Aethetics. In what way(s) has the course allowed you to reexamine your aesthetical principles? Have some of your ideas been reinforced? Have you abandoned any ideas for new ones?
Continuing Daydreams: An Intensive Poetry Workshop (10 Weeks)
In a much less structured way than offered in Daydream: How Poems Work, this workshop is meant as a forum for previous participants to continue the hard work they have begun. Designed for anyone who has taken Bob's previous class, the format will be a straight-forward and ongoing advanced poetry workshop. Unlike some poetry writing workshops in which participants write a new poem every week or two weeks, this workshop requires that participants be prepared to write many revisions of a single poem and to apply techniques for uncovering as-yet unknown language imbedded in the materials they produce. Focus will continue on refining individual Statements of Aesthetics and on developing a process by which poets explore their poems inside and out, forward and backward, and into and out of each shadowy corner.
About Bob Haynes
BOB HAYNES lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. He has an MFA degree in poetry from Arizona State University and is the author of The Grand Unified Theory, a single long poem that reflects a fondness for both physics and the unknown. In 2001, he was selected as a finalist in the Arizona Statewide Poetry Competition and has recently had work featured on VerseDaily. Between 1985 and 1992, while living in Washington, DC, he published a literary journal, sponsored contests, and conducted poetry events in DC and Alexandria,
Virginia. During that time he also served as a member of the Folgers Poetry Committee for the Greater Washington, DC, Area. He has published individual poems in journals such as Louisville Review, New Letters, Poetry Northwest, Cimarron Review, First Intensity, and elsewhere. Work has been reprinted in the anthologies
Cabin Fever, Kansas City Out Loud, and Approaching Critical Mass, as well as in the poetry-writing textbook Important Words (Boynton/Cook Heinemann). He is also the former Division Director of NASA Ames Research Center's publishing, video, photography, and graphics department. As a writer for the Teacher-in-Space program, he has created educational science for students and educators, producing titles such as Spacesuit; How We Get Pictures From Space; Sentinels in the Sky; and
Threshold of Space, and served as the Editorial Advisor for the Golden Book Space Machines (Western Publishing).
Student Comments
The class was excellent; Bob made us write and think and write and then think even more. An excellent experience for me, and I've been teaching now for 35 years.
John Ranahan
The class content is exceptional. The lessons and assignments are very well planned and give the student a seamless, in-depth learning experience. Mr. Haynes is a true master! He goes the 'extra mile' with each student by thoroughly answering each question placed before him by his students. This is coupled, always, with the gift of necessary encouragement all students need during their discovery of a new process... I've been telling EVERYONE I know about this class! If your other classes are of this caliber, the internet student of writing is blessed to have you here!
Susan Allen
The reading assignments were pertinent, helpful and increasingly challenging. Bob added to those assignments with his own text, which was helpful to me in applying the readings to the poetry assignments. The poetry assignments were, of course, my favorite: every new exercise Bob gave us is an exercise that I plan to continue using in my own practice-- very helpful... Bob provided a challenging course with gentle, supportive, consistent and timely feedback. It was my impression that the entire class, including myself, was very enamored with Bob's teaching abilities and the environment he provided for our growth. I would definitely recommend this course to any friend who has experience with poetry! I am quite sure that when I have the time and finances available I will be taking another course on writers.com... Thank you, again, Bob! Your course has made a significant impact on my writing and reading of poetry!
Lisa McCool
The "How poems work" class with Bob Haynes was phenomenal! Bob Haynes is a sensitive & caring instructor who knows how to present the finer elements/techniques of poetry in a way beginners & advanced students can learn from and appreciate. I learned a great deal from his clever methods of teaching poetry - never a dull moment! And I continue to reap the benefit of taking this course with him even now - a day doesn't pass when I don't use some suggestion of his in my writing. The lessons I learned from Bob will shape my use of poetry & language in the years to come, I'm certain... Bob Haynes went above & beyond the call of duty in this class by always, without fail, offering constructive critique & insightful observations about student work. He is a teacher who cares so much about his students - he was totally accessible and answered emails fast! During the class, he was a great mentor,poet and teacher of inspiration! Truly!... I loved his class! Please somehow figure out a way to have him teach another!
Arlene Tribbia
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