The Well Turned Poem with Kim Noriega

The turn—sometimes called the swerve, the twist, the pivot, or in a sonnet, the volta—is a significant shift in rhetorical and/or dramatic trajectory in a poem. It’s that moment of acceleration when the poem careens around a blind curve then lifts off the page, rocketing us into another dimension. It is, says poet-novelist Kim Addonizio, “the leap from one synapse to another, one thought to a further thought, one level of understanding or questioning to being in the presence of the mystery.“

In this workshop, we’ll explore the power of the turn with an emphasis on structure, rather than form or genre. We’ll study specific poetic structures—such as elegiac, emblematic, and the mid-course turn—as a means to writing poems that do indeed turn, leap, and swerve, in short, poems that move/us. We’ll read example poems that utilize these structures, then, we’ll write together and share our results. Each participant will…