The Writer's Studio: You Must Change Your Life: Poems About Art
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On April 10, please join us for You Must Change Your Life: Poems About Art, a Writer's Studio workshop hosted by Austin Smith.
At the end of his famous poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” the poet Rainer Maria Rilke tells the reader (and himself), “You must change your life.” Many poets have documented their encounters with works of art, and, in the process, created works of art of their own. In this workshop, we will spend some time discussing some of the greatest poems ever written about art, and then work towards a draft of a poem about a work of art we love. It will be helpful to arrive at this workshop with some sense of which work of art you’d like to write about (a favorite painting, photograph, sculpture, etc). So take up Rilke’s challenge, and change your life, if only a little bit, by joining us at the Writer’s Studio.
Austin Smith is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford, where he teaches courses in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and nature writing. He is the author of two poetry collections, Almanac (2013) and Flyover Country (2018), and lives in San Francisco.