I Walk the Line: Lines, Stanzas, and the Music of Poetry
with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
October 8, 2025
8 Weeks
Original price was: $545.00.$465.00Current price is: $465.00.
Zoom Sessions Tuesdays 5-6:30PM Eastern
Original price was: $545.00.$465.00Current price is: $465.00.Enroll Now
Johnny Cash sang “I walk the line,” but poets write the line—crafting each one with intention, rhythm, and meaning.
Join me in this lively, generative course to explore how to make your poems sing, and reach readers in more meaningful and enduring ways. We’ll investigate and experiment with the possibilities of lines and stanzas by reading, listening to, and discussing a variety of poems while we also write our own new poetry attuned to what we can do with our lines and stanzas. Together, we’ll find new ways to see and hear what the poem wants to be.
The line in poetry has everything to do with the music and rhythm of the poem, how the poem looks on the page, and especially what the poem communicates and evokes—line by line and stanza by stanza. In composing our lines and line breaks, stanzas and stanza breaks, we work intimately with sound and words, space and print, pacing and stillness. At the same time, we’re constructing the poem as something visual with its own look and design on the page.
To hone our craft and expand our poetic capacities, we will meet each week to immerse ourselves in different aspects of composing the lines, stanzas, and shapes of poetry. Along the way, we’ll explore the poetry of Joy Harjo, Pablo Neruda, Edward Hirsch, Margaret Atwood, Walt Whitman, Sharon Olds, Christopher Smart, Langston Hughes, Yusef Komunyakaa, Maggie Smith, Emily Dickinson, Archibald MacLeish, Kwane Dawes, Maya Angelou, William Carlos Williams, Linda Hogan, Marie Howe, Patricia Smith, and others.
Our eight weekly Zoom sessions will include short presentations with examples, demonstrations in real time of how we can tinker with the inner workings of poetry, writing prompts together, some small group work, and time for questions and discussion.
Our weekly online content—which you can read and engage with according to your schedule—encompasses an introduction to each week’s topic with a short analysis of a poem, examples of poems from a variety of poets, and writing prompts with the opportunity (not required but welcomed) for you to share one or two new poems based on prompts. Additionally, I’ll share a short craft lesson on a technique, form, or terminology that relates to lines and stanzas.
In addition to the Zoom sessions, you can meet with me for a 20-minute coaching session to work on revising several poems through walking the line (and stanza) in new ways.
Who This Course is For
All poets are welcome in this course. You may be looking to immerse yourself more fully in poetry, returning after a hiatus, or you may be a seasoned poet looking for new doors into the craft, possibilities, and passion of the art form. Because the course focuses on composition and revision, it’s especially ideal for people with an ongoing poetry practice.
Learning and Writing Goals
Learning Goals
In this course, you will learn:
- The art and craft of line breaks and lengths as well as stanza breaks and lengths.
- When and how to employ short lines, long lines, short stanzas, and long stanzas in composing your poem.
- Ways to create micro poems (a line or stanza long) within your poems.
- Revision practices focused on tinkering with lines and stanzas that help you find the best shape for your poem.
- Enhancing your images and word choice as part of the craft of composing and revising poetry.
- How a wide array of poets today and in the past worked with line and stanza length and breaks in their poetry.
Writing Goals
In this course, you will:
- Write two or more new poems each week.
- Experiment with a variety of poems and poetic forms to create new works with various line and stanza lengths and breaks.
- Get feedback on how to revise new writing, especially with an eye toward lines and stanzas, from the teacher and fellow students.
- Develop stronger critical sense on how to write and revise your poetry.
- Grow more confident in understanding how to compose and revise your poetry.
Zoom Schedule
Weekly Syllabus
Week One: Music, Art, and Micro-Poems
Our introductory week focuses on lines and stanzas as their own micro poems within the larger poem as well as how poetry is an art that encompasses the music of languge while also creating a visual object on the page. During our Zoom session and online, we’ll look at examples from contemporary and traditional writers, we’ll glean what we can see and hear from this perspective. We’ll also try our hand at a short writing prompt together.
Week Two: Short Lines
Short lines can create a more reflective or meditative poem that paints with space as we tend to read shorter lines more slowly. Using more white space can also draw more attention to the specific words. We’ll look at how we can work with silence, encouraging the reader to take in words more fully while breathing more fully. In our Zoom session, I’ll also lead a demonstration drawing on your poetry (if you choose to share a poem for the session) to investigate how shortening lines can change a poem. We’ll then write a short writing prompt, which we’ll share and discuss the results of altogether or in breakout rooms.
Week Three: Long Lines
Longer lines catalyze action and can be very effective for telling stories (including writing narrative poetry) and conveying a quickness of happenings and meanings. We also tend to read longer lines more quickly. We’ll look at several long-lined examples, and during our Zoom session, we’ll work with longer-lined poems and do a writing exercise that stretches out our own lines before small group work on what we’re discovering in longer-lined poems.
Week Four: Short Stanzas
Shorter stanzas play with space and silence another way, leaving more openness around each stanza, whether the lines are short, medium, or long in length in that stanza. We’ll look at some short stanza forms, such as the ghazal and several Japanese forms. During our Zoom session, we’ll take this home through a demonstration of possiblities, writing prompt, and discussion about what we see and hear.
Week Five: Long Stanzas
Long stanzas can create a speedy energy, packed with words (and word play at times), potential meanings, and the whole tone of the poem. Looking at some contemporary and traditional poets known for long stanzas (Hello, Sharon Olds and Christopher Smart!), we will explore what works or gets in the way when it comes to lengthening stanzas. In our Zoom session, we’ll experiment with long stanza poems through a demonstration, writing prompt, and small group discussion.
Week Six: How a Poem Sounds Off the Page
While the way we read a poem doesn’t have to correlate to where we make line or stanza breaks on the page, we can learn a lot by reading our poetry aloud and listening closely. During our Zoom session, we’ll listen to some of our poems in new ways to suss out possibilities for line and stanza lengths and breaks. We’ll also talk about playing against type: how some poems do the opposite of what we expect to good effect.
Week Seven: How a Poem Looks On the Page
How should a particular poem look on the page? Should a specific poem have a set number of stanzas or lines in a stanza? Should all the lines be more uniform in line length? The answer to these questions is always a combination of “It depends,” “It’s a constant experiment to hear what the poem most wants to be,” and “Each new shape begets a new poem.” There’s also a lot to say about what makes a poem look cohesive. During our Zoom time, we will share the visuals of some of our poems to see how they look as a kind of visual art while exploring whether the shape of the poem, stanza, or line might be enhanced with some changes.
Week Eight: Lines and Stanzas Off the Beaten Path
First rule of poetry club: once you know the rules, you can break them….although you can break rules without knowing this. In our final Zoom session, we’ll look at examples that show us other dimensions beyond what we explored in this class, such as prose poems and more experimental forms as well as how sometimes writers from more underrepresented communities, traditions, and ethnicities sometimes purposely play against what we’d expect as a way to convey a different kind of meaning. We’ll have a celebratory reading with ample hand gestures, emojis, and gasps of delight at what we’ve created together.
Original price was: $545.00.$465.00Current price is: $465.00.Enroll Now
Student Feedback for Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg:
I have fallen in love with your writing instruction within the last year. You make us all feel fulfilled and artistic in our striving to express ourselves. Your class has, indeed, saved some lives! Georgia Copeland
My experience was excellent. Caryn is knowledgeable as well as encouraging. Ginger Moorhouse
Caryn’s skill, talent, wit, and wisdom have shown me the way to begin writing again, which is a restorative healing process. Caryn has taught me to reach deep within and unabashedly, without apology or shame, to tell my own story. Julie Flora
Beyond being detailed, caring, and brilliant in her editing, teaching, and consulting work, there is something about Caryn’s warm, authentic, empowering, Inspiring, and joyful presence that I have rarely observed in other leaders. Harriet Lerner
After each class I recognize the peaceful place the class creates in me. My response to listening to others and hearing your responses to our work fills me with contentment, joy ,and satisfaction. The level of trust that we experience opens us to heartfelt honesty even as deeply painful experiences are shared. Thank you for the sparks your words create. Patricia Durkin
I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing and working with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg for the past decade, and have rarely encountered a more insightful, compassionate, or integrous teacher and coach. Mark Matousek
To work with Caryn is to open your mind to the creative power within, and to show and better appreciate the creative power of others. Tracy Million Simmons
You are truly one of the best facilitators I’ve ever seen, and your ability to create a safe space for all of us is so magical. Beverly Stewart
Having taken several classes with Caryn, I find her expertise and thoughtful critique helpful to my writing. She is a teacher I want to continue studying with, and I am grateful for her work. Jan Stanton
I have taken two online classes with Caryn and have enjoyed them very much. She encourages a very positive online community atmosphere, provides an inspirational variety of readings and writing prompts, and gives useful and supportive feedback on student writing. Anne Marvin
Caryn’s workshops provides both hope and a distraction from the issues of those suffering. John L. Swainston
I found the course to be a gentle invitation to probe one’s life experiences and bring them to the present in a nurturing and kindly way. I especially liked how the course was structured from the immediate to the universal and opportunities for growth. Readings were relevant and inspiring, and it was refreshing to interact with the other participants. Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Caryn provides a wealth of material for her students, introducing us to a variety of poets and poems. Her teaching style is generous and nurturing. Ruth McArthur
I was not expecting your course to change my life, but I was very eager to have the immersion now in more poetry, as well as a structure (which I need) to start up writing again. I also appreciated your very inclusive approach to teaching online, including acknowledgement that people could engage with the material at any level they wished, up what you called “living in it.” Jan Hitchcock
As a once upon a time educator before my disability, I recognize superlative teaching. And I just want to say that your hand out, the poems you chose, the prompts, the way you hold space for your students, and the rhythm of the workshop you offered all demonstrated that you are a top notch teacher. Your kindness and understanding was like a salve to my hurting and struggling writer self. And I just want to say that aside from your mastery of teaching, who you are shines loving kindness into the dark and difficult spaces. Marya Summers
October 8, 2025
Length: 8 Weeks
Open to AllText and Live Video
Zoom Sessions Tuesdays 5-6:30PM Eastern
Original price was: $545.00.$465.00Current price is: $465.00.
Original price was: $545.00.$465.00Current price is: $465.00.Enroll Now
