I Hope There's an Animal: A Poetry Workshop

In a way, I think that poetry is a way of describing that animal—to the dismay of Berry’s daughter, maybe, but to the delight of other poets and readers of poetry. In this workshop, we’ll talk about how to make our poems as surprising as a statement like, “I hope there’s an animal…” and as convincing as “I hope nobody has ever seen it” by going inside the structure of the poem, moving pieces around and discovering material that still perhaps hasn’t been said. We’ll look at poems generated in class based on writing prompts and poems already in the world by writers who hope there’s an animal….

Michael Klein is a member of the resistance. His most recent book is When I Was a Twin and his previous books have been Lambda Literary Award Finalists four times (winning the award twice for his first book, 1990 (tied with James Schuyler), and for editing, Poets for Life: 76 Poets Respond to AIDS.  He teaches at Hunter College in New York and in the graduate writing program at Goddard College in Vermont. He lives in New York and Provincetown.