http://www.princeton.edu/main/news … 'Wildly creative' poetry program thrives at Princeton; festival planned'. A poetry class at Princeton usually starts with a small group of students sitting around a table, talking about rhythm and images and language. 
If the professor is Brenda Shaughnessy, she may offer one of her quirky rules: You may only use the word "soul" in a poem once in your lifetime, and never the word "shards." Susan Wheeler has asked students to write a poem in which they approach their subject from the point of view of an inanimate object. And Paul Muldoon likes to give these instructions at the end of a class: "Don't come back here please without a poem that's going to change my life." 
"The professors here have given me a sense of poetry as an enjoyable, playful thing," said Maia ten Brink, a sophomore who has taken three poetry classes at Princeton. "I've learned from them to sidle into it, wander into it, follow a thought, play around -- and look for sources of inspiration where you might not think they would be." 
Intimate classes -- enrollment is capped at 10 students -- and a faculty composed of highly regarded poets, two of whom are Pulitzer Prize winners, make Princeton an incomparable place to write poetry, say students.

Tags: family education