The Linked Sequence with sam sax

The linked sequence is a popular staple inside many contemporary poetry collections—often borrowing as much from the essay form as from either the epic or lyric tradition. In this class, we’ll explore the history of this particular poem form as well as its current diverse incarnations and look to the tactics contemporary writers use [polyphony (polyvocality), fragment, erasure, documentary, etc.] to imagine what’s possible in our own work. Starting with a thesis, hypothesis, or area of inquiry, participants will spend our six weeks together originating, plotting, exploring, and editing their own long linked sequences. We’ll be looking at writings from Sherman Alexie, Solmaz Sharif, Gwendolyn Brooks, Pablo Neruda, Yannis Ritsos, Matt Rasmussen, Anne Carson, Mary Ruefle, Walt Whitman, & Cameron Awkward-Rich.

sam sax is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017) winner of The National Poetry Series and Bury It (Wesleyan University Press, 2018). He’s received fellowships from The National Endowment for The Arts, Lambda Literary, The MacDowell Colony and elsewhere. He’s the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion and winner of the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize and the Iowa Review Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Buzzfeed, Poetry Magazine, Tin House and elsewhere

This class is now fully enrolled