What often keeps our competent poems from becoming captivating ones is a fear of failure, an instinctual aversion to risk. In this class, we’ll work at unlearning this impulse, priming ourselves to jump headlong into what we’ve previously side-stepped. We’ll look at poems that risk embarrassment, shame, and censure and create our own pieces that just may not work, all as a way to open ourselves up to the possibilities that failure can reveal. We will fall on our faces, and it will be glorious.