[Syllabus: the first day,]

Syllabus: the first day, after introductions and warnings , we’ll discuss how Virginia Woolf’s whole life changed when her mother died and her father couldn’t look her in the eye again. The usual will follow—rhyme, meter, the strange business of free verse. Good God, the prose poem! The nearby mountain. The delight of the bear when it got the chicken. The moose who slept– massively slept–by the creek next to an abandoned grocery cart. For two weeks, each night. On the final exam, please try to imagine what it would be like to trust the world that much.
 
 
 

Jim Moore's Underground: New and Selected Poems was published in September, 2014 by Graywolf Press. He teaches in the MFA program at Hamline University.