Writing and Reading Poems
MIT's course in poetry writing and reading examines the formal structures and textual variety of the form, pairing practice with analysis. Students write poems weekly, including exercises in prosody (meter, rhyme, and sound patterning), and workshop their own manuscripts alongside close readings of twentieth-century poetry. The course treats traditional elements such as form, line, and figurative language, then sets them against contemporary alternatives like free verse and experimental structure, asking students to see where inherited techniques still do useful work. Materials come from MIT OpenCourseWare and include the syllabus, weekly writing assignments, and reading lists drawn from published poets, offered under a Creative Commons license. There is no instructor interaction or certificate, but the full assignment sequence and reading selections are available for self-study.