Webinars
“I truly love your manner with the students. I particularly admire the way you help them find ways to not settle for the easy response, but to look inside to connect to something meaningful.”
- THE UNDISCOVERED FAMILIAR: Walking Your World Like a Poet, Like a Photographer
Poet Mary Oliver and photographer Ray Metzker—both Americans, both born on September 10, both long-partnered with photographers—walked their respective daily environments to catalyze their art-making. Oliver lyricized about the woods of Ohio; later, the shoreline and beech forest of Provincetown; and, later still, the wetlands of Hobe Sound, Florida. Metzker abstracted, in black-and-white, the street scenes of his home cities, Chicago and Philadelphia. Neither artist tired of their familiar places, affirming the notion that the more we know, the more we know we don’t know. If we intentionally walk our routine world with this mindset, with renewed senses, how different in quality and quantity might our poetry be? In celebration of their shared birthday, Oliver’s (89th) and Metzker’s (93rd), we’ll explore her poems and his photos to discern how they, via their respective mediums, rendered their subject matter freshly, singularly, inventively—ultimately to apply the actual and analogous strategies to our own work.
When: Tuesday, September 10
12:00–2:00 PM Eastern / 9:00–11:00 AM Pacific
Cost: $39
- YO, PO! : Poem as a Series of Alertnesses
“Every element in a poem—every word, line break, stanza pattern, indentation, even all punctuation—potentially carries expressive meaning. If you do not shape that potential expressivity, each passive detail weakens the overall force of the poem,” writes Robert Haas in “Thirteen Ways of Thinking about the Poetic Line.” When you make a poem, do you select every language gesture? Do you test-drive what any option brings to a poem, takes away? If not, if you’re simply shaping poetic-sounding language that makes sense, overall, into lines and stanzas, you’re missing opportunities that can cumulatively move your poems from “So?” to “Whoa!” And, actually, more like “Whoa, whoa, whoa”: you must hold a reader’s attention across the whole poem. To underscore this necessity, we’ll examine some exceptional poems, identifying their micro-moves of craft and the effects, then dissect one of our “finished” poems, refining its various elements toward a more forceful version of itself.
When: Wednesday, September 18
12:00–2:00 PM Eastern / 9:00–11:00 AM Pacific
Cost: $39
Self-Paced Learning
- HYBRID-ARTS SELF-PACED LEARNING
you missed any iterations of the hybrid-arts series that ran from January through June 2021 (“Cross My Heart and Hope to Fly: What Can Writers Learn from the Other Arts?” and “RE: RE: RE: Practice, Process, Product”), you can grab these video learnings now, by the month or the bundle, and explore, at your own pacing, these focused, meaty inquiries that will serve your writing, from conception to execution.
Each one-hour session provides:
- One or more brief samples of nonliterary artforms.
- A group discussion about what those samples can teach us about artistic conceptualization, craft, and presentation.
- Sample writings demonstrating those concepts.
- One or more writing challenges applying those concepts.
CHOOSE your learning by the MONTH or BUNDLE:
COST:
By the month: $22/month ($5.50 per one hour of inquiry & instruction)
By the bundle: If you prefer to pick-and-choose from among the month-by-month sessions outlined below, simply choose one or more bundle options:
- any 1 session: $10
- any 2 sessions: $18 ($9/session)
- any 3 sessions: $24 ($8/session)
- any 4 sessions: $30 ($7.50/session)
JANUARY
- Photography: Form Serving Content / Rule of Thirds
- Music: Embodiment / Charging Meaning
- Comedy: Word Choice & Scene-Setting
- Painting: Making the Familiar Unfamiliar
FEBRUARY
- Film: Imagery & Metaphor / Pacing
- Cartoon-Drawing: Composition & Sequencing
- Photography: Point of View & Psychological Distance
- Songwriting: Scaffolding /Associating
APRIL
- Photography: Frame Within a Frame
- Poetry/Music/Comedy: Listening
- Cartoon-Drawing/Painting/Comedy/Poetry: Knowing What to Put In & What to Leave Out
- Film: Inessential vs. Essential Mystery
MAY
- Photography: Symmetry & Asymmetry / Balance & Tension
- Sculpture: Material & Shape
- Music / Film Score: Tension Through Music
- Cartoon-Drawing/Comedy/Painting: Subversion
(via Comfort/Familiarity/Clichés)
JUNE
- Photography/Painting/Film: Micro/Macro & Abstraction (Close & Faraway)
- Photography: Negative Space
- Painting/Music/Dance: Medium/Components vs. Subject/Experience/“(Un)Reality”
- Photography/Painting/Music: Affirmation vs. Astonishment (Note: This session will be more meaningful if considered in relation to the #3 content.)
TO PURCHASE by the month or the bundle:
- Go to: paypal.me/MarjHahne
- Click “Send”.
- Insert the total cost of your month(s) ($22 per month) OR your bundle(s).
- In the “Add a note” section, indicate which month(s) you want (e.g., January, June) OR which sessions you want by month and number (e.g., February #2, May #4, June #3).
- Once I receive PayPal’s e-notification, I will email you each session’s replay video and materials.