MFA Writing Colloquium: Cate Marvin Poetry Craft Talk

To prescribe a set method for poetic closure is to deny that any good poem creates a distinct relationship with its reader that it must therefore conclude on its own terms. A poem can strand its reader at an intersection or slam its door in the reader’s face. Some poems lead their readers right back through the doors they initially entered. Other poems shut their doors quietly behind them, while others still prefer to leave their doors slightly ajar. This seminar will explore a number of poems that employ closure as a means to invite the reader to re-enter, revisit and ultimately re-envision the preceding body of the text. How, as writers, can we move our readers into regions of awareness that lie beyond mere epiphany?

Cate Marvin teaches poetry writing in the Stonecoast M.F.A. Program at the University of Southern Maine and is Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, she lives in Scarborough, Maine. Event Horizon, her fourth collection, appeared from Copper Canyon Press in 2022.

This event is colloquium credit eligible. Register HERE for the Zoom livestream.