Peter Cooley was born in Detroit and graduated from Shimer College, University of Chicago and the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Since 1975 he has lived in New Orleans where he teaches at Tulane University. The author of eight books of poetry, the most recent of which is Divine margins, he recently received an Atlas grant from the state of Louisiana and is the recent winner of the Marble Faun Poetry Prize from the Faulkner Society in New Orleans.

The travelling monostich

From Michelangelo in Rome to the Leper Colony in Carville, Louisiana—a paper on my writing practice

 

This paper argues that form, particularly the monostich, usually considered part of the conscious aspect of the writing process, is actually an expression of the unconscious. To illustrate, three kinds of ekphrastic poetry, the ‘denotational’, the ‘connotational’ and the ‘associative’ are defined and exemplified by the author’s own poems about Michelangelo’s sculpture. Further illustration of the effects of form in opening new directions in this poet’s work is offered through several poems from his latest project Aftermaths: Louisiana after Katrina and the oil spill.