Inspiring!

Loved it!

Excellent

great fun

perfect

awesome!

¡Genial!

Great!

Good

good

good

S

I

It's a good course to brush up on the basics of poetry. I did not care for the poetry in my school days (but I somehow liked Tanka, Haiku), so the course helped me to open up my curiosity. I have been singing jazz tunes for a several years, and learning jazz tunes has actually helped me to focus on poetry. - As many people mentioned, the peer review part needs to be reconsidered. I had a few real feedback through "the discussion" on each module, but I do not think I received any variable "feedback" through the peer review assignment - this is supposed to be a big part of grading assignment, especially if the student is aiming for a certificate (means, s/he paid for this course). - The peer review must be monitored, maybe AI can assist to address "missing" or "inadequate" reviews. Those who did not put enough effort on the peer review assignment (as reviewers) should not get "complete" (or passed). - "Mentors": So why they are there? I did not see any "mentor" meaningfully involved with students. But...given this is not a new course and has been running for more than a few years, I did not expect active involvement of so called "mentors" anyway. I am an older student and not craving for confirmation and/or validation, but there are many out there who need them on each learning steps.

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.

From 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!

The course itself is amazing. I learned so much. I used to only write prose poetry and thanks to this course I was able to write different forms. Besides the mentors' give such great comments and they are always eager to help. Also the professor is funny and choose really good poems to analyse.

The only thing that was a pity is that people post their work, but few people want to actively comment on other people's poetry. It is not as participative as it could be. However, some workshops to comment to get comments.

All in all, truly amazing course!

Very interesting course; the only issue I had was with the students grading each other's poems. I would have preferred the teacher or the mentors to be grading them since they are presumably well versed with the art of poetry and the various techniques involved in their creation. While the grading process might enhance the learning of the students, it should not come at the cost of one's grades due to the obvious limitations or biases of the student graders.

It is a very condensed course and I think it works better for students who already have some experience writing poems. I'm new to poetry and it took me some time to catch on the various technicalities which were zoomed by very quickly. Certainly feels more like a revision course. Nevertheless, the course has been fun and enjoyable. I learned a lot about poetry writing. The course makes me want to know more about poetry writing. Thank you for this opportunity.

I throughly enjoyed the Sharpened Visions Poetry course with Douglas, he has a lovely engaging approach and delivery. I learned a lot.

The only area that I felt was lacking was regards feedback on submissions. Which I could not find at all and I never knew how other students felt about reviews I had submitted. I felt this was at the heart of the course for learning and missed that link..

Thank-you

I enjoyed the course and loved the way the teacher introduced the concepts and stimulated us to write. The weak point in this course was the Reviews part. Some of the reviews I got were just not relevant or thought-through. Some reviews made it clear the person had not even read my work. If the reviews are written at least once in the course by an expert in the subject we would learn much more.

This was a clearly taught and well presented course. I became a better poet as a result. The one drawback was receiving grades from my peers. I'm fine with workshopping in a group, but those who grade me should be at least at my skill level or higher. If I were taking this class for any reason other than pure enjoyment, I would find this unacceptable....but as it stands, I'm okay with it.

I really enjoyed the instructor's style and the content of this course. I learned both from the assignments and from giving peer feedback to others. I also benefited from receiviing feedback from others, although some peer's gave more helpful feedback than others, which was sometimes disappointing.

I recommend this course for anyone wanting to learn some of the basics of poetry terminology.