The Creative Writing offers classes in Poetry Writing! Look for CRWR 41A and CRWR 41B in the course schedule.
Next Word, Better Word by
This accessible writer's guide provides a helpful framework for creating poetry and navigates contemporary concerns and practices. Stephen Dobyns, author of the classic book on the beauty of poetry, Best Words, Best Order, moves into new terrain in this remarkable book. Bringing years of experience to bear on issues such as subject matter, the mechanics of poetry, and the revision process, Dobyns explores the complex relationship between writers and their work. From Philip Larkin to Pablo Neruda to William Butler Yeats, every chapter reveals useful lessons in these renowned poets' work. Both enlightening and encouraging, Next Word, Better Word demystifies a subtle art form and shows writers how to overcome obstacles in the creative process.
The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by
Comedian and actor Stephen Fry's witty and practical guide, now in paperback, gives the aspiring poet or student the tools and confidence to write and understand poetry. Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. In The Ode Less Travelled, he invites readers to discover the delights of writing poetry for pleasure and provides the tools and confidence to get started. Through enjoyable exercises, witty insights, and simple step-by-step advice, Fry introduces the concepts of Metre, Rhyme, Form, Diction, and Poetics. Most of us have never been taught to read or write poetry, and so it can seem mysterious and intimidating. But Fry, a wonderfully competent, engaging teacher and a writer of poetry himself, sets out to correct this problem by explaining the various elements of poetry in simple terms, without condescension. Fry's method works, and his enthusiasm is contagious as he explores different forms of poetry: the haiku, the ballad, the villanelle, and the sonnet, among many others. Along the way, he introduces us to poets we've heard of but never read. The Ode Less Travelled is not just the survey course you never took in college, it's a lively celebration of poetry that makes even the most reluctant reader want to pick up a pencil and give it a try.
Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within by
"The creative process is just that," maintains Kim Addonizio. "Not a means to an end, but an ongoing participation." A widely acclaimed poet and finalist for the National Book Award, Addonizio meditates on her own process as she encourages writers to explore both their personal and political worlds, to seek inspiration from poets new and old, and to discover the rich poetic resources of the Internet. Lively, accessible, and informative, Ordinary Genius?provides wisdom gleaned through personal experience and offers a heady variety of writing exercises. Chapters on gender, addiction, race and class, metaphor and line invite each individual writer to find and to hone his or her unique voice. This is the perfect book for both experienced writers and beginners eager to glimpse the angel of poetry.
A Poet's Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry by
A Poet's Craft transcends the limitations of current books, combining the best of three types of poetry-writing guides: textbooks for academic use, general guides to writing poetry, and guides to writing in form. Like textbooks, it includes poetry-writing exercises and discussion of classic and contemporary poems as examples, and is logically organized to provide a complete overview of the elements of poetry writing, from diction to trope to free verse. Like general poetry guides, it has a tone lively and mature enough for the nonundergraduate, and includes sections on journaling and inspiration, revision, publishing, and even how to assemble a poetry book. Like form guides, A Poet's Craft provides an introduction to meter and to writing formal poetry. Finch's book goes further than any poetry-writing guide now available to give readers a thorough, eclectic, and exciting introduction to every aspect of the art of poetry.
The Poetry Home Repair Manual by
Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets--aspiring or practicing--can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry's ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts. Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend--a friend who is willing to share everything he's learned about the art he's spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.
The 6. 5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-Help Memoir by
A private eye turned moderately successful poet leads readers on a satiric, hopeful tour of how to make a life in the arts, while still having a life. Revealing, hilarious, and peppered with sly takes on the ins and outs of contemporary American poetry (chapters include "The Silence of the Iambs," "The Revisionarium, Ask Dr. Frankenpoem," and "The Periodic Table of Poetic Elements"), Jeffrey Skinner offers advice, candor, and wit. Revision is the process a poem endures to become its best self. Or, if you are the poet, you are the process a poem endures to become its best self. Enduresbecause a first draft, like all other objects in the universe, has inertia and would prefer to stay where it is. The poet must not collaborate. Best selfbecause the poem is more like a person than a thing, and does not strenuously object to personification. Yo, poem. But let's not get carried away. It's your poem and you can treat it as you wish; sweet talk it; push it around if that's what it takes. Alfred Hitchcock notoriously said of the actors in his movies, "They are cattle." Jeffrey Skinner is the author of five books of poetry, most recentlySalt Water Amnesia (Ausable Press, 2005). His poems have appeared inThe New Yorker,The Atlantic,The Nation,The American Poetry Review,Poetry,BOMB, andThe Paris Review, and his work has earned awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Howard Foundation.
The Completion of a Poem: Letters to Young Poets by
The Completion of a Poem is the first book-length translation of Yang Mu's poetics. In eighteen letters addressed to young poets, Yang Mu discusses essential questions regarding the definition of poetry, a poet's growth, the importance of nature and friendship, the choice of subject, the process of creation and publication, and relationships between poet and society, identity and history, and poetry and truth. Using a comparative approach, Yang Mu draws on literary resources from Chinese and Western traditions to expound his views, and this helps to nurture in young poets a vision of world poetry that connects different but equally inspiring expressions of humanity. In style and in theme, this book is a companion piece to Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit. "Yang Mu is not only one of the greatest living poets and essayists in the Chinese language, he is also an erudite scholar, deeply versed in both Chinese and Western poetic traditions from antiquity to our modern age. In his eighteen letters to young poets, which serve as his Ars Poetica, he emphasizes that the creation of true poetry requires that insight and knowledge are paired with personal integrity and high moral standing. Yang Mu's letters are often illuminated by exquisite landscape essays of great lyrical intensity which show his facility to allow manifestations of the outer world to reveal inner states of mind. This excellent translation by Lisa Wong deserves to be read by all who consider that poetry matters." G ran Malmqvist, Swedish Academy
Unleash the Poem Within: How Reading and Writing Poetry Can Liberate Your Creative Spirit by
Unleash the Poem Within is about friendship, self-reflection and learning something new. It is, quite simply, about how the power of creativity can change your life. This book shows women how to liberate their creative spirit and use it not only as a means of self-expression, but as a way to find more calm, peace and an enhanced ability to see the value in each present moment. Wendy Nyemaster is the founder of the Poetry Posse, a group of ordinary women committed to writing and sharing their creativity as a way to enhance their lives. She guides the reader through twelve different poems and how to write them, and how doing so can unlock their inner power. Unleash the Poem Within shows women that by experimenting with creativity, they can find their voice and live their lives to the fullest.
