This course does a good job in covering the basics andpresenting you with interesting prompts. The workshop aspect really allows you to receive feedback which can be difficult to find elsewhere.

I have learned so much and I love D's energy and the avid participation of the other students. Will definitely pass on what I've learned. Can't wait for more courses like this in the future! :)

It was a great opportunity to learn many poetic forms as well as improved poetry writings via the exposure through the various workshop activity.

Wonderful and inspiring course, thank you COURSERA for the new experience!

I appreciated this opportunity to further my poetry writing muscle. I leave the course with a greater understanding of more traditional form. I may have benefitted from one assignment per week and each prompt having to be submitted. I would recommend this course to others.

I learned one thing from this course- that I write poetry in trochee, not iambs. I can't think of a poem that I've written that hasn't begun with a stress ... and emphasis. Best exercise of the course, for me, came in the Forms week. I gave writing in iambs a try and think that I should practice more as routine.

I have peer reviewed before and have found it helpful in revision. In this community, I'm not sure that all of its participants were familiar enough with poetics to closely review a poem. I would say that one reviewer would give insightful consideration of their read, and the second lacked experience in reading poetry.

With that said, learning one thing is learning something, so I was generally satisfied.

This 'course' is so diluted and threadbare it's unbearable. Add to that the misplaced gimmicks and 'humour' in the videos and you soon feel you are wasting your time. I wasn't expecting anything advanced, but this is not even basic. Might be OK for a 5 y.o. though. For adults, I would recommend a good book on poetry writing. Or, even better, on prosody. There are some excellent ones to choose from.

Obnoxious instructor.

I found Douglas to be an intelligent and entertaining instructor for the course. I had not encountered 90% of the technical language included, and it will take time to recall, remember and implement these 'rules'. I took notes throughout - being able to pause and rewatch the videos, as well as read the transcripts helped a lot. I have not read much American poetry, so this was a nice introduction to it, although I did miss having a spectrum of world poets.

The advice about reading and reviewing other people's work was helpful, and having a set of points as a checklist enabled me to think a bit more about what I was thinking - however, as someone new to poetry it wasn't always easy to do, as I didn't always recognise the meter, the rhythm, or whether something was iambic or trochaic. It seems as though some students were stuck in polite mode and simply said - good job - which didn't help me to improve, though was pleasant for the ego!

Being on a low income, having access to a course like this has been a very welcome relief. I look forward to reading more American poetry, including Douglas', and putting into practice what I have hopefully learned.

I might even try another CaLARTS course. Thank you.

Douglas Kearney is an excellent teacher. All of the modules offer a lot of bases for building a good poem. With a good dose of humor, he goes over the foundations of Abstraction, Description of Still Life in poetry, Title as a Catalyst, Metaphor, Simile, Synecdoche, Metonymy, Personification, Conceit, Images, Rhyming, Consonance, Slant, Assonance, Alliteration, and all of the different meters of a poem. The lesson on syllabic word stressors was especially insightful. All of the writing prompts are based on the lesson given and they're great writing exercises that can later be revised and workshop even further. If you consider this course, you will get a lot out of it. It's a capsule of the mechanics of poetry and you can get as creative as you want. I thoroughly enjoyed this course with Mr. Kearney and it's not one that you can pass up. I highly recommend this course to anyone interested in writing poetry.

Professor Douglas Kearney and his Coursera course Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop are excellent and outstanding in every way. His lectures on the videos are totally informative and entertaining. Douglas Kearney is a professor who instructs and delights. The poems he uses for examples in his talks bring new knowledge and perspectives to the learner. The breadth of Professor Douglas Kearney's knowledge about poetry is amazing. His sensitivity to poetic values goes deep. Creativity and innovation were highlighted in the Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop course. Professor Douglas Kearney and his course definitely increased my poetic appreciation and practice. The lessons I learned through this course were invaluable. I give Professor Douglas Kearney and his Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop course my very highest recommendation!!

I love this course, Sharpened Visions, so much. I am so surprised by the exuberance and humor of Mr. Douglas Kearney. His teaching style enlarge my eagerness to learn Poetry. In this course, there are lots of the poetic subjects, e.g. line, image, abstraction, rhyme, rhythm, and revision. Those technical term had seemed to be very academic and boring to me before I take this course, but Mr. Douglas Kearney uses another interesting and easier ways to teach and describe. I feel enlightened and learn lots of the basic but crucial poetic knowledge. If you ask me what benefits me the most in this course, I would say I fall in love with Poetry, and can't wait for getting engaged in it! Sharpened Visions is really highly recommended. It's worth your try!

I realised I never took a chance in learning poetry beyond just a hobby and I wanted something light as well as practical after an intense first year in university. This workshop was very enjoyable and so feasibly structured out for an online workshop, that I was hooked from the start of the course. Douglas made the course light with his jokes, eye-opening in his selection of poetry samples, and encouraging in writing beyond our comfort zone. As a workshop, we exchanged works with peers in the course and shared feedback to each other. The assignments gave me a chance to really experiment and how to continuously improve my writing. And as Douglas said, the richest writing comes after the first draft.

There really should be two opportunities to review, one for the content and one for the platform.

Regarding the content, the instructor is excellent and exceeded my expectations. Both beginners and experienced writers could benefit from this class. All of the reading material was relevant and interesting,. The only content suggestion I might have is that the Revision module might benefit from a before-and-after example.

Coursera, however, has some unaddressed issues which are causing frustration for the learners. These issues are not so bad that they prevent people from completing the class. On the other hand I wonder to what extend Coursera is being proactive to remove these obstacles.

I am thrilled to share my experience in this Coursera course the Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop, instructed by the talented poet Douglas Kearney. This course has been an absolute delight, and I have gained a lot of knowledge in expressing my poetic thoughts. The way Mr. Kearney teaches is both enjoyable and easy to understand. His emphasis on revising our work and experimenting with different words has been transformative. The constructive feedback I received has helped me to refine my poems and make them truly unique. I am extremely grateful for this fantastic opportunity. Thank you for inspiring me to take my poetry to the next level. Best, Yannis Lobaina.

This class WAY exceeded my expectations. The instructor is the BOMB! The only thing I would voice as a "complaint" is I wish we, as students, could be more interactive through the course in providing feedback. Nothing a poet hates worse than submitting a poem and no one really looking at it and/or providing no feedback. There must be a way to get the course more interactive for students to review and help edit one another's works. I know there are the peer assignments but so far I don't think my poems have fallen into that category from a student, though I may be wrong. But class wise, A++++

- Timothy Verret

The teacher truly makes this course a 5 star learning experience. He's funny and entertaining while presenting course materials. I have a major difficulty with school-- I dropped out of high school and college. I love this class. He kept my interest and helped build my understanding on poetry. I highly recommend this for anyone looking to improve their poetry or learn about poetry! The assignments were fantastic. There's always two choices for the homework and you can pick one (or both if you want) but one is graded. So if you aren't into one of the assignments, there's always something for you here.

It was a great course. We learned to write and revise poetry. It allowed us to meet and discuss poetry with people from all over the world. The peer assessment was one of the strongest elements of this curse but also the weakest. While the feedback from our peers allowed us to improve and revise our poetry, the amrks they awarded were not always fair because of their poor language skills. This is an aspect we should reconsider. Allow the peer assessor to give us feedback. But do not give them the responsibility of assigning marks to our poems. We have quizzes to enable us to grade our learning.

Excellent lecturing skills by Doug, thank you - to the point that the manner and mood of delivery which Doug uses feels like he is talking to you, the Student, on an individual basis. Doug made me laugh, understand nuances, which I generally struggle with and gain new skills. I would like to know if Doug has anymore Online courses available please. Great, great, great. I wish my schoolteachers had been like Doug, making learning and acquiring knowledge, doing assignments etc., into a fun and stimulating experience, where the new information is so easily retained by the Student.

I loved the Sharpened Visions course. Professor Doug Kearney has a fun, playful presentation style in the videos teaching the background concepts, but most of your work is done offline, writing your own poems. The workshop happens via randomly-assigned peer review, which can be a little impersonal, and the helpfulness of peer comments varies. But there is also a course forum to present your work for feedback from a wider audience of students and class mentors.

I'd recommend this class to anyone who wants to gain more background and practice in different forms of poetry.

Excellent! This course was all that the curriculum laid out, and more! It was well organized, totally engaging, and the peer review process very helpful. I am new to writing poetry, and I feel as if I have "moved u" a level! The two best sections: 1) Rhythm and 2) Revision. There is so much to learn about the complex realtionship between poetry and music... and going towards a better appreciation of Spoken Word poetry and the beautiful poery in the deaf community. That would be a great course: poetry meant to be recited and poeetry only meant to be read ....

I am not yet finished this course, but so far it is sizing up to be great. Of the courses I have tested on this site, which are many, this is one of the better conceived ones, and you can tell the teacher is very committed to his work. He takes advantage of video lecturing as a medium, using various techniques to make his videos more engaging but without sacrificing didactic content. Otherwise it is what you would expect an online writing workshop to be: provided are writing prompts for practicing your skills, and near the end are sessions for sharing your work.

Doug a most engaging, informative and inspiring teacher. I would definitely take another course by him and I applaud him for managing to pack a lot of thought-provoking ideas into just six weeks. He’s introduced me to new poets and help me explore my poetry in a way I never would have otherwise. I’ve also become part of a poetry study group with other course participants and we have already had our first online meeting and shared some really useful insights into each other’s work. This will continue after the course.Thank you to Doug and Coursera!

Thank you so much for an interesting and enlightening course.

I never had much connection to poetry and won't be a poet, but I wanted to learn more about it. The course taught me a lot, made me appreciate poetry more and admire poets for the work and skill that is behind each poem.

The vivid and fun lectures made me remember why listening to a lecture is so much better for learning than reading from a tutorial. The way the material was presented made all the difference. It was clear, funny and made me want to know more.

Overall, a wonderful course.

Doug is so funny. And he parses out the information is easy, manageable, usable chucks with excellent examples. I love his kinetic force. It seems to make everything so much more understandable and even though I a far from being a kid, the screen glossary intros, then sample poems, it has impact. For a 15 year old but easily for us latter day saints too. I love everything about poetry. I'm volunteering at Ottawa VersFest soon. All I need to do now is to try to write but there could not be a more approachable course than this one. Thank you!!