This workshop will focus on emotion and how it shows up in poetry. We’ll look at the ways a poem can conjure, acknowledge or avoid feeling, and we’ll draw on recent work in affect studies to help us locate the subtle, the overflowing and everything we can find a name for in between. We’ll write in class and experiment with contemplative practices and exercises meant to illuminate the predicament of feelings in poetry. Our goal will be to gather some of this material into drafts for the final week of class. Writers we read might include Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Brian Blanchfield, Lucille Clifton, San Juan de la Cruz, Emily Dickinson, Aaron Kunin, Audre Lorde, Filip Marinovich, Bernadette Mayer, Shane McCrae, Bharata Muni, Precious Okoyomon, Ariana Reines, Jack Spicer and William Wordsworth.