As Leaves to a Tree: How to Let Poems Start Themselves with Geoffrey Nutter

When John Keats said “If poetry comes not as easily as leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all,” he wasn’t suggesting that poems should come quickly: after all, that is not how leaves come to a tree. Still, for any of us who have ever tried to start a poem and found it difficult or maddening for one reason or another, it’s a rather intimidating statement. But what if we could take Keats’s aphorism and challenge it on our own terms? In this intensive one-day class, we will do just that. Experimenting with an array of strategies, we will begin as many poems as we can in the course of an afternoon of intensive experimentation. You will leave the day with many new poems and new strategies for starting poems.

Geoffrey Nutter is the author of four books of poems: The Rose of January, Christopher Sunset, Water’s Leaves & Other Poems, and Summer Evening. His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies such as Carnet de Route, Verse, Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, Fence, Xantippe, Best American Poetry 1997, and The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetry. He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize.

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