The Art of Astonishment

The best poems surprise us. Kim Addonizio writes, poems can “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.” How can you welcome the unexpected, the mysterious, and the revelatory in your own writing? What does it take to break your predictable writing patterns? We’ll identify the ways that poems diverge from familiar paths and swerve into astonishment, paying close attention to work by Emily Dickinson, John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, Ross Gay, and others. We will work together to make your poem astonish you.

Liza Flum’s poems appear in Narrative, The Southeast Review, Lambda Literary, The Collagist and other journals. She is a recipient of a Barbara Deming Individual Artist Grant, and her work has been supported by fellowships from the Saltonstall Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. Currently a PhD student in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah, where she is a Vice Presidential Research Fellow. She works as a poetry editor for Omnidawn Publishing.