Office hours for Fall 2006:
3:30 - 4:30 p.m. T, Th
2-3 p.m. W

As a teacher of creative writing—that subject famously alleged to be unteachable—I ask students to draw upon the entire range of their available knowledge for their writing. Still, I think writing "what you know" is perhaps less important (especially in school) than writing "to know," and my workshops emphasize experiment, radical revision, and linguistic play. I ask each workshop to participate in a public reading at the end of the semester. I urge my MFA students to develop, consciously, a sense of aesthetics for their work as they develop their poems.

As a teacher of literature with a special interest in American poetry, I am less interested in finding out the "secret meaning" of every poem than in seeing the forces that shaped the body of work: aesthetic statements, rebellions, and definitions. I intend students to learn to read poetry from my classes—not to imbibe my particular take or agenda—in the hope that learning to love what poems do will keep them exploring the genre throughout their lives.

I've developed the Small Press Publishing course to give students an opportunity to experience two sides of the publication process: that of the editor considering hundreds of poetry manuscripts per year but publishing only three, and that of the prospective applicant for such a publication process. During the Sawtooth Poetry Prize competition, Ahsahta Press receives over 500 manuscripts in a two-month period. Students read, evaluate, and report on those submissions, while also helping prepare a manuscript for the press. Classroom work covers the range from copy editing and proofreading symbols and practices to the marketing of titles, creation of a catalog, and work on the Ahsahta Press display for the annual book fair at the Associated Writing Programs conference.