In this workshop we will read love poems, poems of longing, poems about the love for one’s hometown and other objects of affection, and we will generate a series of prompts that we can use during and after the workshop to further reveal and develop our associative image-repertoires of desire. In the straight-talk of poetry craft, the image system is a set of images used throughout a poem or larger work that belong together in some way. Barthes’ image-repertoire, however, is about the lover and the lover alone. He writes, “This is a lunatic project, for the Image-repertoire is precisely defined by its coalescence (its adhesiveness), or again: its power of association: nothing in the image can be forgotten; an exhausting memory forbids voluntarily escaping love.” Here, it feels like the image-repertoire is an association brought on by obsession—what the lover alone is making in their mind as they obsess over the absent object of their affection. Perhaps this is the lunacy of it: as the lover thinks of one image, many more images from memory attach themselves.

Please note: This class is an online class. To participate, students must have a stable internet connection with a computer or device with a webcam and microphone.