ENGL 3331: Intro to Poetry
Here/Hear in Houston
everywhere | always | breathe | ask and ask again
Course Overview
Everyday for a year, I wrote about the light rail. Clutched backpack, stiff-seat side-straddle scribbling into sunrise—the chime, a pealing soundtrack to the cinematic universe of my journaled streams. I do not know when I became a poet, but I know the voice of poem when it whispers in the morning. I am not good at keeping good habits, but one day, I’ll grow into the ones I’ve been too stubborn to claim. I’ve found myself asking what makes me a writer even after asking what’s the meter of rain. I’ve penned my existence into a page before I was able to question if I had the words for it. I’ve never needed a passport for this language, never needed to prove my residency; I’ve only prayed it could find a home in me as well, could curl its way to the center of my chest, light a candle and exhale.
Course Objectives
here, we turn
to cobbled streets
for answers—grass
swamped in skyfall,
our muddied feet
licking a slick path
we will sing
the prints we leave
on the sidewalk
see our names
in the lines
of the sanded rock
Student Learning Outcomes
we are just as much
an author of
our own breath
as we are
of anything we place
a name to
we shake hands
with chance
knowing nothing
is new—it is
a small language
the probability of
a word running
into another
is more likely
than not
but when last did
they dance
until dawn when
last did they
inhale into
themselves
one line
into the next
remembering how
many moments
they share
here and still
in this tongue
elsewhere
Requirements
open hand open heart open fist open eye open mouth open ear open arm open lung open
Graded Assignments
Participation:
ready your whisper with me; I will not ask
you anything I would not ask
of myself—I am my own risk, willing to grow
weary in the same spot, gaze-up,
until the landscape begins to speak.
Weekly Responses, Posts & Poems:
the chill in your arm, the choke in your throat,
that sinking—there, in your stomach
the second the wind hits—the scrunched brow,
your upturned lip, your nostrils flared
in utter disagreement, your stuttered tongue,
your jump-start heart, racing at the words
circuiting in your head.
Workshop poems:
will you let us? carve into the clay
of your minds-eye, your second chance
at a first impression. we’ll trail
the edges of this sound-swept carnival,
stand in its lines so we can tell you
how it rides.
H-Town Homies Poet Presentation:
this literary city, a one-stop station to every shape
your words could muster. there is no lack
of source material, shared in one room
and back into another. this stream. this never-ending
well of ‘well, actually’ warm and running
raw between your fingers. we hold hands anyway.
let it bake between our palms.
Midterm Quiz:
you may forget the name, the face, but never the way a poem sways to your own bodysong.
Final Portfolio:
we trick ourselves into believing we could ever know an ending. in truth, we are only ever continuing this lifelong thing of language, taking the poems before us and breathing them back with our heartbeats in them.
Grade Breakdown:
if you give 100%
your full attention 100%
your honest ask 100%
and avid unknown 100%
the page will tell you 100%
if you have ignited 100%
a practice 100%
Total: worth repeating
Grading Schema:
A we dig B- the ditches D+ of our spines
A- and ask them C+ to hold D the hailstorms
B+ of our grief C the runoff D- of our good days
B the language C- we dare F to claim
Aris Kian’s poems are published with The West Review, Obsidian Lit and elsewhere. She is the 2022 recipient of the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing. @ariskian/@rosewaterframes