Session Seven · Unit II — Poetry
Compression — How a Poem Holds a Whole World
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Handouts & Worksheets
Main Points of the Lesson
- Compression is not shortness. A short poem can be diffuse; a long poem can be compressed.
- Compression is density of meaning per unit of language.
- Compression comes from three things: precision of image, economy of line, and trust in the reader.
- The poem leaves space for the reader to do the rest.
- In your own drafts, look for places where you are explaining what the image already says. Cut them. The poem will gain force.
Readings for Class — Click to Open
- William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” (revisited) — Poetry Foundation
- Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day” — Library of Congress
- Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me” — Poetry Foundation
After Our Discussion — Critical Reception
- Seamus Heaney — Poet Page (Poetry Foundation) — Biography and craft notes on the Nobel laureate.
- Jane Kenyon — Poet Page (Poetry Foundation) — Background on Kenyon’s plainspoken, lyrical poems.
In-Class Practice
Take any short poem — a fresh draft you write here in your notebook, the three-line lineated piece you made in Session 5, or one of our readings — and look for places where the language is explaining what the image already says. Cross them out. Read the cut version aloud.
What happens with this: stays in your notebook. Two or three volunteers may read the before-and-after aloud. Nothing collected.
Discussion Questions
- What does “The Red Wheelbarrow” do in sixteen words that a paragraph of prose could not?
- Look at a short piece you have written — or, if you do not have one to hand, look at the Williams or the Oliver. Where is the language explaining what the image already says?
- What does compression ask of the reader? What does it offer in return?
Homework
- Read the opening chapter of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) — one click from the Session 8 box below. Read the first chapter only, unless you want to read further.
- Optional: take one short poem you have written and cut every line that explains what the image already says.
Before Next Sunday — Session 8 · Unit III opens
Memory & the Memoir Impulse. We turn to memoir — the most personal of the three forms. We will read the opening pages of Douglass and ask why memoir is not the same as autobiography. We will free-write a moment from our own lives we have never written about.
Compression Worksheet — for your private notebook
Copy into a Word document. Apply to any poem of your own. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.
- Paste a draft of your own — or any short poem — here. Cross out every line that explains what the image already says.
- List every concrete noun — one per line. Are there enough? ____________________
- What can you trust the reader to bring? ____________________
- Read the cut version aloud. Did it gain force or lose it? ____________________