I was all set to enroll in an online writing course through Stanford when I decided to download the syllabus. It consisted of writing a poem a week, reading a list of poets, and reading essays from Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook. Well, it’s not like I need college credit, I just wanted to improve my writing skills. The only advantage of the course would be the critiquing from the professor and fellow students, but I already run a critique group, and we really help each other. So, this is what I did. I ordered Mary Oliver’s book and kept the syllabus. There was also an anthology to order, but I have most of the works of the recommended poets already, and those I don’t have I can google. So, I will do the course work on my own and save $880!