Course Details

Course offered Spring 2014

Honors 345 A: The Triggering Town (C)

Honors 345 A: The Triggering Town (C)

SLN 14705 (View UW registration info »)

Frances McCue (English)
Email: frances@francesmccue.com

Credits: 5
Limit: 22 students

Honors Credit Type

This course satisfies BOTH Honors Interdisciplinary AND UW's Composition requirements.
Invented by the Northwest poet Richard Hugo, “The Triggering Town” was an imaginary method to help poets begin new poems. The poet would imagine a town– one created with real memories of actual towns he/she had been visited or knew as a hometown, and then furnish the place with made-up oddities. Then, the poet would stumble upon a compelling subject, one humming below the surface of the “triggering town.” By following the music of the language, the poet would find the real subject of the emerging draft, and follow it into a new, and surprising, poem.

In this class, we’ll read and write poems that begin with particular places and then move on to other subjects. Students will each write (and revise) four poems and one midterm literary analysis paper, and they will also work in a team to create a written project on a the work of a poet whom they choose.