Courses

WRI 207
Introduction to Creative Writing (3)
To expand the practice of imaginative writing, we play with different poetic and narrative forms and invent our own while engaging texts that challenge and catapult our investigations. In an atmosphere of curiosity and support, students create a body of work that is developed and refined throughout the semester. Only open to students outside the W&L major.

WRI 210
Literary Studies: Ancient World Literature (3)
We read ancient literary works from around the world from oral and literary lineages. We look for threads of similarity and aspects of difference, gaining some cultural and cross-cultural understanding of particular human themes and motifs. Readings from various cultures include among others the Epic of Gilgamesh; the Iliad; Greek, Latin, Indian, Chinese and Japanese lyric poetry; selections from the Bible and Gnostic literatures; tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus; the Aeneid; the Upanishads and the Mahabharata and the Tao Te Ching. Response papers and a final research paper are required.

WRI 230
Literary Studies: 19th Century U.S. Literature (3)
We look at important works of fiction, essay, poetry and memoir that, written one hundred to two hundred years following the Declaration of Independence, are exciting and vital to this day. We investigate the ways they reveal and define a particular American experience and character in history, literature and poetics. They are treated, not as static texts, but as enduring social and cultural signposts. Readings include works by Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Phyllis Wheatley, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, as well as enduring Native American texts. Response papers and a final research paper required.

WRI 234
Creative Writing and Literature (3)
We draw inspiration for our own creative work by reading classical and contemporary authors featured in an international anthology of short fiction. The readings explore themes that have provoked and delighted humans across cultures—desire, transgression, the abuse of power and the quest for freedom. Along the way we discover scapegoats, utopias, alienation, madness, imprisonment, revenge, romantic love and ordinary magic. Half of the class time is devoted to discussion of student writing; the other half is a literature seminar. Each student completes a manuscript of original writing for this course.

WRI 265
Prose Workshop: Introduction to Fiction Writing (3)
This introductory fiction workshop explores techniques and aspects of craft such as structure, story and plot, character, voice, point of view, setting, description and the possibilities offered by different narrative forms. Reading selections of classic and contemporary writing for inspiration and points of departure, we generate new writing of our own through weekly writing investigations and in-class assignments. With feedback from our colleagues we take this work through drafts and revisions with the aim of producing a final portfolio. We also think about practical aspects of how fiction is edited, published and read, and consider how or why we might want our own work to be published. Open to lower-division sophomores, others by permission of the department.

WRI 300
Poetry Workshop: Finding Your Fire (3)
An eclectic collection of the poems and texts of twelve very distinct poets is introduced, read, discussed and drawn on for inspiration. The study of each poet includes biographical information, class members reading aloud from the texts and an in-depth discussion of the individual poems with emphasis on the inspiration factor, i.e., where inspiration comes from, etc. While class members take turns reading from the text, the rest of the class participates in an automatic writing exercise. This “wall of words” becomes the material for a rough draft that through class discussion contributes to the making of each student’s poems. Students are required to keep a notebook of their “wall of words,” their in-class rough draft, class suggestions towards their completed poem, revisions of the poem and notations on how they worked with the “wall of words” for inspiration. A final portfolio of completed poems is required. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 310
Reading and Writing: The Magic of Realism (3)
How does narrative fiction push the boundaries of realism to engage the writer’s imagination? How does a realistic voice turn inventive and nearly magical? In this class we explore the magic of realism, as seen in writers like Cortazar, Calvino and Marquez (who claimed he only wrote “true socialist realism”), as well as in myth and fairy tales, and learn, in describing the ordinary, how to craft the fantastic in our own work. In short, we learn the importance of numbering precisely the amount of butterflies in any story. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 311
Reading and Writing Seminar: Poetic Operation (3)
This course challenges traditional assumptions about how poems are created by isolating the operations in play to produce texts. We begin with Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, then read contemporary writers who question the authority of poetic practice through new uses of language, form, syntax and meaning. We immerse ourselves in the laboratory of literary structures and examine how writers confront convention and experiment with process. In addition, we examine the writer’s historical context and how it informs the “poetic operation.”

WRI 320
Writing Poetry: The Sky Is Not a Mirror (3)
Reading assignments sample the ancestral and expanding constellation of postmodern poetics. Students research practitioners of their choosing for in-class discussion, and are encouraged to access the Naropa Audio Archive in doing so. Weekly writing assignments take up the bulk of the discussion. The poem, like the sky, is not a mirror; it’s bigger than that. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 321
Writing Fiction: Navigations in Narrative (3)
This class is an investigation and production of alternative narrative strategies. Readings from contemporary world fiction are a source of dialogue, though our emphasis is on inventing worlds for our characters/dissolving characters to navigate. What happens to our fiction if these navigations fail? What does “narrative” itself mean to us as writers engaged with prose? This class is an opportunity for you to develop your sense of where you stand in relation to the page. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 336W/746W
Prose Practicum (1)

WRI 337W/747W
Writer’s Practicum (1)

WRI 340/640
Literature Seminar: Three Extraordinary Women (3)
This class is involved with reading women writers and creating essays on their work. We read Marguerite Duras, Colette and Lillian Hellman or other writers to be announced. These are women who coped with difficulty in their lives and achieved a (sometimes unwilling) respect from the influential writers of their time. The writing done in this class explores the work and the lives of these women. Three essays are written using MLA formatting. Open to BA and MFA writing program students only. Others by permission of the department.

WRI 343W/643W
Poetry Practicum: Coming Out: From Behind the Podium (1)
Poets learn Lanzillotto’s “Action Writing” technique, which is performed to music on oversize paper with fast writing instruments. Action Writing brings the act of writing out of the private and into the public space as we witness one another. It is a technique of writing from the whole body, not just the hand, to mine layers of the poet’s consciousness for images through summoning our primal sense of marking the walls of one’s cave. Poets are given an intensive workshop on recitation and performance skills as relates to their own poetry. Oratorical skills in breathing, projection, enunciation, vocal expression and also gesture are emphasized. Poets who want to memorize their text and bring their poetry into the realm of performance art have that opportunity. Poets may experiment further through exploring the relationship of a prop to the body, and/or adding movement, tracks of music or visual imagery to accompany their recitation. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 347/647
Literature Seminar: Kerouac’s Road (3)
In this class, we examine selected, primary texts of Kerouac’s narrative canon (what he called the Vanity of Duluoz), as well as his first novel; plus primary critical and personal biographies and oral history. His letters and journals are also included. Through these varied filters we come to a better understanding of his compositional techniques, spiritual and emotional make-up, and ultimately Kerouac’s place in the context of his time and in the gallery of American letters. We probe beyond the myth of the namesake of the Kerouac School, until he reveals himself through his multidimensional life and work.

WRI 349/649
Literature Seminar: Classic Modernism (3)
In this survey course, we read and discuss many of the great innovations in literary style and composition in prose and verse in the period between 1910 and 1930. Writers include Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Jean Toomer, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, Langston Hughes and Marianne Moore. The final third of the term is spent on a close reading of Joyce's Ulysses. Accompanying the primary texts are essays by the above authors and others on specific features of modernist poetry and narrative. Requirements include response papers and a substantial final paper on some aspect(s) of Ulysses. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 350/650
Literature Seminar: Midnight Angels (3)
Students study the history of the Beat Generation with special attention to the writings of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, Diane di Prima, Amiri Baraka, Joanne Kyger, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Dylan, Anne Waldman, Philip Whalen, Alan Watts, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder and others. The class thoroughly investigates the provocative essence and force of Beat literature. Students write their own visions in the multiple forms of these singular and enduring writers. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 356/656
Literature Seminar: Points of Departure (3)
The course covers modern literary works either groundbreaking themselves, or intensely reflective of their moment. We read an expansive selection of texts. The majority of class time is spent discussing the current text, and there are four critical papers covering race and gender, as well as social and cultural breakthroughs. In addition, there are video presentations of selected works. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 360
Writing Poetry: Only the Narrow Present Is Alive (3)
We do weekly readings in poetry and poetics and consult the poets’ voices in the Kerouac School audio archive. Our choice of source materials depends on our collective background, needs and inclinations. These materials inform our weekly writings. Is the poem given by the world, or is the world given by the poem? Find out. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 364
Reading and Writing: Passage in Prose (3)
Marking passage from childhood to adulthood provides great fodder for fiction. Often, the initiation involves a journey from home, a sexual awakening or very simply, a recognition that a larger world exists beyond that of the child’s. Using childhood memory as a springboard for fiction, we write and explore coming of age stories, using as guides works by writers like Joyce, Morrison, Hurston and Kingston. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 365
Reading and Writing: Experimental Women Writers (3)
Experimental women writers such as Rosmarie Waldrop question the role of gender in poetic practice, while challenging the idea of “feminine” forms. This course examines Waldrop, Hejinian and Berssenbrugge among other women writers and how they investigate the margins of their condition while participating in the center of the poetic. We explore language and meaning; the nature of subjectivity, persona and self; the feminine, the body and community. The culmination is an analytic paper as well as a final manuscript of poetry. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department. 

WRI 367W/608W
Writer’s Practicum: Designing a Writing Workshop (2)
This professional training practicum instructs writing students in the skills necessary for conceiving, organizing and teaching writing workshops on two levels: public schools and colleges. The course covers the goals and methods of creating a syllabus and course description, recognition and evaluation of student writing abilities, and relating the writing workshop to existing curriculum. Techniques for working within school systems is stressed, along with how to stay happy and productive as a writer. Students design and submit two syllabi. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department. 

WRI 370
Writing Poetry: When the Mode of the Music Changes (3)
Some trends in twentieth-century poetics reflected the crisis in subjectivity addressed contemporaneously in philosophy and the social sciences. If subjectivity consists only in its iterations, who or what is the poetic subject? Is a new poetics a new politics? This workshop aims to broaden our writerly and critical skills through discussions of our poems informed by readings in modern and contemporary poetry, poetics, literary theory and linguistics.

WRI 377/677
Trends in Contemporary Literature: Introduction to Critical Theory (3)
The class aims at developing our understanding of basic issues in contemporary literary theory. Readings are taken from continental philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, literary criticism, psychoanalytic theory, and gender and ethnic studies. The class is recommended for students who intend to take Feminist Theory in the spring semester. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department. 

WRI 380/722
Eco-Lit (3)
Eco means house: our larger house has come to be the whole global ecology, in detail. Students study and write poetry and prose, as well as unclassifiable experiments and collaborations that tend to direct attention to surroundings, especially “nature.” Great range of authors, from Thoreau to Annie Dillard, Orpingalik the Inuit songster to Rachel Carson and Stephen Jay Gould, Mba Shole to Gary Snyder. We try to discover/invent new ways of representing nature’s rich variety in language. Open to W&L and W&P students;others by permission of the department.  

WRI 382/602
Letterpress Printing: The Well Dressed Word (3)
This course introduces students to letterpress printing using the facilities in the Harry Smith Print Shop. Students are instructed in basic techniques as well as in the proper use of materials. Students also learn about basic design principles and the history and aesthetics of fine printing. Course requirements include working on a letterpress-printed project, weekly readings and some written assignments, and participation in group critiques and tasks. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department. 

WRI 383
Letterpress Printing: First Impressions (3)
As writers, the practice of setting movable type and printing texts by hand is an invaluable esthetic and practical resource. This class explores letterpress printing from the writer’s point of view, bringing literary considerations to those of typography, bookmaking, visual design and layout. As writers/printers, students investigate the letterpress possibilities for poetry and fiction through the production of broadsides, postcards and a limited-edition chapbook. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department. Materials fee.

WRI 386
Writing Fiction: Narrative and Architecture (3)
Architectural form and aesthetics is our resource as we develop different kinds of spaces in our writing and imagine the movements/passages/thresholds that bring those spaces to life. How can we envision narrative space and structure as a site of unfolding and transformation? What is an architecture of loss or desire but also, how can we make an architecture to have encounters we have never had before? This class focuses on workshopping prose works, but also develops a language, through diverse, short readings, with which to speak about the construction of original spaces and the extension of existing ones. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department. 

WRI 400
Poetry Workshop: Extending Your Voice (3)
This workshop focuses on creating a poem of extended length. Drawing inspiration from poets working in the long or series poem form, students work with various texts including historical, cultural and contemporary. Sections of the selected works are read aloud in class to facilitate experimental writing exercises. These provide material to draw from for the weekly assignments that become the student’s longer work. Informed by the works studied, students research a topic and incorporate in-class writing, assignments and discussion to create their own version of an extended poem. A final portfolio of the completed manuscript is required. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department.  

WRI 407
Reading and Writing: Currency of the New Millennium (3)
Currency: a medium of exchange; the quality or state of belonging to the present time. This course examines the currency of young experimental poets in the new millennium. We develop lines of inquiry while focusing on books published after the year 2000: What do these writers value? How do they negotiate form, meaning and the role of the author? What are their influences? How do they push beyond them? And how does this affect you as a writer in the 21st century? Because these are recent books, you will be among the first to write about these texts, forging a space for yourself in the critical world. The culmination is an analytic paper as well as a final manuscript of poetry.

WRI 408
Literature Seminar: Beatnik 101 (3)
An interdisciplinary introduction to Naropa lineages and American culture. Novelists/memoirists W.S. Burroughs, Joyce Johnson, Jack Kerouac; poets Diane DiPrima, Ginsberg, Corso; artists Joan Brown and Bruce Conner art & films are the artistic focus. Steven Taylor’s punk music memoir False Prophets updates artistic strategies for survival by both men and women in America’s sociopolitical climate re 1950s through the 1990s. Social class and gender are covered. Students keep a folder of poetry/prose assignments and write a research essay. Techniques for character & narrative development in fiction, poetry and nonfiction are stressed. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 410
Writing Poetry: Writing the Poems (3)
This is a workshop, i.e. a place of production, where constructive advice on, and criticism of, the works produced by the participants is given both by the instructor and the participants themselves. While producing new and original work, the participants acquire a sense of how to talk about their own, and others’, poetic writings. Materials include poetry and considerations of poetry, and we look at and discuss the work of both modern and postmodern authors along with participants’ writing. Open to W&L students only, others by permission of the department.  

WRI 412W/612W
Poetry Practicum (1)

WRI 419
Reading and Writing: Exploring Your Source (3)
Concentrating on the radically divergent poetics of several poets/writers culled from a wide swath of history, class work includes reading and discussion of both selected and critical texts, research on the lives of the writers and writing our own works inspired and informed by these discoveries. Participation involves investigation into and discourse on the importance of each writer's life situation, cultural milieu, literary genre, historical context, geography and place among his or her contemporaries. By exploring the works of these writers in conjunction with and in relation to their biographical particulars, students develop their own independent writing methods and the skills to respond fully as poets creating in their own historical consequence.

WRI 428
Writing Fiction (3)

WRI 429/739
Contemplative Poetics (3)
This course explores writing as a contemplative practice joining mindful attention with imaginative letting-go.  We explore the meeting of Buddhist and Asian meditative and aesthetic traditions with examples of the poetics of the U.S. and European literary tradition, and the particular way in which their meeting took place at Naropa University. Reading emphasizes modern and contemporary U.S. poetics and the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, and others on dharma art and contemplative poetics. Course work includes substantial sitting meditation, reading and discussion, and weekly creative writing exercises. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department.  

WRI 431/725
The Art of the Essay (3)
“Myself,” said Montaigne, “am the groundwork of my book.” An essay is a foray into such groundwork to produce personal or formal inquiries and assessments of any given topic, whether about hunting elephants, the death of a moth or about girls in Des Moines. In this course we both read and write short prose works encompassing autobiography, memoir, travel sketches and book reviews, demystifying and engaging a process that produces provocative and entertaining literature. Writers we look at may include Didion, Orwell, Baldwin and Woolf. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department.  

WRI 433/633
Literature Seminar: Tracks along the Left Coast (3)
West Coast writings, particularly those of California, of the twentieth century. A look at Pacific Rim culture, its unique geographic situation, Native American background and the mix of Hispanic, Asian, Anglo and African American settlers. Then to focus on three distinct but overlapping literary scenes: San Francisco Renaissance, West Coast Beat and Language poetry. Bay Area arts hold a distinct flavor—jazz, rock, Zen, Gnosticism, letterpress printing, camp and collage. Readings include Indian song, haiku by Japanese American internees of WW II detention camps and writers de Angulo, Snyder, Scalapino, Helen Adam, Duncan, Hejinian, Mackey. Each student writes three papers and makes one classroom presentation. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department. 

WRI 436/736
Trends in Contemporary Literature: Introduction to Feminist Theory (3)
Is it possible for a woman to be? Is femininity definable? What have been the consequences of variously addressing these questions? What has been the impact of psychoanalytic theory, linguistics, critical theory and cultural studies on feminist thought? And what impact has feminist theory had in the academy, the literary arts and popular culture? The course examines these and related questions through reading and discussing a few dead white males and the works of, among others, Goldman, Beauvoir, Irigaray, Kristeva and Butler. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department. 

WRI 443/629
Practice of Translation (3)
This is a workshop based on the idea that "translation" equals "transformation." How do the choices we make in vocabulary, style, conceptual approach, when we write anything at all, "translate our thoughts into words," affect the result? How do we know that the literature in translation is an accurate reflection of the original? Can translated literature ever reach the aesthetic and emotional immediacy of texts we are able to read in their original (or “our”) language? These are some of the questions we'll be examining while also attempting to create our own translations, either from languages we know, or from one kind of English to another. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department. 

WRI 446
Reading and Writing: American Beauty (3)
This workshop is for those who want to write better. The student’s prose is the focus for half of each workshop. To improve awareness and provide subject matter, we examine social class in American fiction. Lorrie Moore, Charles Bukowski, Grace Paley, Richard Brautigan, Jhumpa Lahiri, A.M. Homes demonstrate how race, gender and age impact the writer, their works and their class. The American social lie of a classless society undergoes loving scrutiny and high hilarity. This workshop is fun. If you find an American who feels entirely class-secure, stuff and exhibit him/her. She/he is a rare specimen.—Paul Fussell. Open to W&L students, others by permission of the department.  

WRI 450/750
Literature Seminar: Radical Prosody (3)
Prosody is the study of verse structure through its phonic, rhythmic and semantic elements. Syllable and sound, syntax and grammar, form and meaning all interact within the weave of poetic “making.” In this course we begin to see and feel the ways in which poetry written in English has gone about patterning linguistic elements and artfully drawing attention to imaginative rhythmic expression. We track the most important prosodic innovations that have revolutionized poetic form and content over the past five hundred years in British and American poetry. Requirements include response papers and a substantial final paper. Open to W&L majors and MFA W&P students only, others by permission of the department.

WRI 475
BA Final Manuscript and Thesis Course (3)
As the culminating graduation requirement of the W&P department, each candidate must complete a manuscript of  creative work (25–30 pages) representing the best of their workshop writing at Naropa and a critical thesis, a work of original scholarly research (15–20 pages). This course serves as a workshop for these final projects, with special attention to the critical thesis, offering structure and critique for its planning, drafting and revisions. Open to W&L students in their final semester.  

WRI 481/781
Project Outreach (2–3)
Project Outreach places students in local schools and other institutions to encourage creative compositions through writing exercises that inspire and instruct participants in making works out of words. Students go out into the world as literary activists, sharpening and extending their own teaching skills. Open to W&L and W&P students only, others by permission of the department.