I love this course

Excellent dynamics.

Loved this course.

Juuuust fantastic!

Just great! Thx.

I learnt so much

Simply Splendid!

A lot to learn.

GREAT COURSE!!!

Great class!

Gran curso.

Wonderful!

Inspiring!

Excellent

great fun

p​erfect

awesome!

¡Genial!

Great!

S

I

While the content of the course was excellent, I felt that the assessment components were frustrating in that you were forced to wait until someone on the course, from whatever area of the universe, might give some feedback on your work.

I​'m sure I originally completed the work by the beginning of March and decided to cut my losses after that since I was waiting for an operation anyway.

I​ have learned a lot because the American approach is so different from poetry writing in Scotland.

I​ am simply critical of the time it took for feedback to reach me and feel that the staff from CalArts could perhaps re-think how to monitor the progress.

F​rom flagging up an issue, I realise that a lot of students did not have English as their first language. Having been a high school teacher of modern languages and now voluinteer in schools with the 826 organisation, The SuperPower Agency in Scotland, I realise that other students should be advised to be more tolerant and kinder to those whose first language is not English.

Really great introduction to poetry and its construction. Inspired me in a way that I did not anticipate. Douglas Kearney is both entertaining and knowledgeable. The exercises were well thought out and provided a challenge that led me to develop new skills. A couple downsides are in need of mention:

1) The expectations were fairly minimal. This suited me when I had a busy week, but left me wanting more instruction and more exercises during an average week. The expectations should be enough to require near daily writing, not a once a week process.

2) The peer review process is broken. Many of my peers did not take their reviews seriously. Instead they provided minimal, meaningless reviews or no review at all ("good" is not a review!). The course organizers should be monitoring this and asking these students to terminate.

Despite these real problems, I truly enjoyed the content and the exercises, and learned from the comments of other serious students.

I found the course both interesting and helpful. I had always shied away from formal poetic forms, preferring free verse, but I really enjoyed writing the crown cinquain. In fact, after I wrote in that form, I also wrote a sestina (though not as part of the course). I used to be involved in theatre, and I recall how structural limitations often stimulated creative solutions; I made the same discovery when working within poetic limitations. I found most of the suggestions from other readers quite helpful and believe that they enabled me improve the poems that I submitted. The course was structured well, and the video lectures were clear. I thought the prompts were good. The only thing the course lacked was feedback from a professional poet (the teacher), but I understand that the volume of work and the finances would militate against personal attention. Thanks for the course.

The revision process was the most frustrating and challenging part of this course. I felt that more instruction could have been provided on this process such as providing extra readings, especially on how to tell when your work is done/revised. The rhythm section was also very confusing and attempted to cram together a lot of information in one section so the course could do with being more evenly paced, rather than introducing us to complex concepts all at once. Overall though, for a course that is available for free, this was a great resource for someone interested in writing poetry. It was engaging, especially yhe videos, and inspiring, especially the poems that were used. It also made me more aware of the tools that a poet can use to make their poems better. Thank you so much!