On The Poet And His Craft

Essays and lectures which cover the full span of Roethke's craftmanship.

A Celebration of Poets and Their CraftColeman Barks Lorna Dee Cervantes Mark Doty Deborah Garrison Jane Hirshfield Stanley Kunitz Kurtis Lamkin Shirley Geok-Lin Lim Paul Muldoon Marge Piercy Robert Pinsky

A major new guide to writing and understanding poetry

A wonderfully accessible handbook to the art of writing and reading poetry—itself written entirely in verse How does poetry work? What should readers notice and look out for? Poet Lucy Newlyn demystifies the principles of the form, effortlessly illustrating key approaches and terms—all through her own original verse. Each poem exemplifies an aspect of poetic craft—but read together they suggest how poetry can evoke a whole community and its way of life in myriad ways. In a series of beautiful meditations, Newlyn guides the reader through key aspects of poetry, from sonnets and haiku to volta and synecdoche. Avoiding glosses and notes, her poems are allowed to speak for themselves, and show that there are no limits to what poetry can communicate. Newlyn’s timeless verse will appeal to lovers of poetry as well as to practitioners, teachers, and students of all ages. Onomatopoeia You’d play here all day if you had your way— near the stepping-stones, in the clearest of rock-pools, where water slaps and slips; where minnows dart, and a baby trout flop-flips.

"One of the virtues of good poetry is the fact that it irritates the mediocre." Theodore Roethke was one of the most famous and outspoken poets and poetry teachers this country has ever known. In this volume of selected prose, Roethke articulates his commitments to imaginative possibilities, offers tender advice to young writers, and zings darts at stuffed shirts, lightweights and fools. "Art is our defense against hysteria and death." With the assistance of Roethke's widow, this volume has been edited to include the finest selections from out of print collections of prose and journal entries. Focused on the making and teaching of poetry,On Poetry and Craft will be prized in the classroom-and outrageous Roethke quotes will once again pepper our conversations. "You must believe a poem is a holy thing, a good poem, that is." Theodore Roethke was of an illustrious generation of poets which included Sexton, Plath, Lowell, Berryman, and like them he received nearly every major award in poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize and twice the National Book Award. In spite of his fame, he remained a legendary teacher, known for the care and attention he gave to his students, poets such as James Wright, Carolyn Kizer, Tess Gallagher, and Richard Hugo. Roethke died on August 1, 1963, while swimming in a friend's pool. "But before I'm reduced to an absolute pulp by my own ambivalence, I must say goodbye. The old lion perisheth. Nymphs, I wish you the swoops of many fish. May your search for the abiding be forever furious." On Poetry and Craft I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods. We can't escape what we are, and I'm afraid many of my notions about verse (I haven't too many) have been conditioned by the fact that for nearly 25 years I've been trying to teach the young something about the nature of verse by writing it--and that with very little formal knowledge of the subject or previous instruction. So it's going to be lik

The Strategic Poet: Honing the Craft focuses on the craft of poetry and is based on the belief that craft can be taught and the best teacher of craft is a good poem. This book assumes a knowledgeable reader, that is, one who already knows the language of poetry and already practices the craft. This book is organized into thirteen sections, each one devoted to a specific poetic strategy. While only thirteen strategies are used for organizational purposes, the reader will find many additional strategies referred to and discussed within the sections. There is a progression from one section to the next, but each section also stands alone, so the reader or teacher can follow the order of the Contents or move about freely among the sections. Each section begins with a Craft Talk solicited from a well-known poet with a clear mastery of craft. Each Craft Talk is followed by Model Poems and Prompts. Each Model Poem is followed by an analysis of its craft elements, especially its use of the section's strategy. One Model Poem in each section is followed by a Commentary from the poet who wrote the poem and is focused on a particular strategy used in the poem. Each of the thirty-six Prompts is followed by two Sample Poems written to the prompts. These seventy-two poems demonstrate that the prompts are not mere exercises and can produce terrific poems. Each section ends with three Bonus Prompts. There thirty-nine additional prompts were contributed by thirteen contemporary poets. These short prompts provide additional practice with the strategies, can be used multiple times, and should lead to some good poems. Contributors include 114 of our best contemporary poets. This book is suitable for use by poets working independently, by poets in writing groups, and by teachers in the classroom.

A controversial collection of essays on poetry, offering analyses of poetry craft with insightful essays on poets ranging from Robert Pinsky to Louise Gluck.

"Richard Hugo's free-swinging, go-for-it remarks on poetry and the teaching of poetry are exactly what are needed in classrooms and in the world."—James Dickey Richard Hugo was that rare phenomenon of American letters—a distinguished poet who was also an inspiring teacher. The Triggering Town is Hugo's now-classic collection of lectures, essays, and reflections, all "directed toward helping with that silly, absurd, maddening, futile, enormously rewarding activity: writing poems." Anyone, from the beginning poet to the mature writer to the lover of literature, will benefit greatly from Hugo's sayd, playful, profound insights and advice concerning the mysteries of literary creation.

Vagrants & Accidentals, the second full-length collection from poet Kevin Craft, is part vade mecum, part songbook, whose taut lines and adaptable stanzas traffic in the personal effects of emigration and estrangement, exile and return. In ornithology, a vagrant or accidental is a bird that appears out of its natural or normal range, blown off course by a storm, or inadvertently introduced into a new environment by human trade. Likewise, Craft is interested in things taken out of context--Greek myths in the Pacific Northwest, the potsherd or megalith stranded in a museum, excess carbon in the atmosphere, American pop songs in a Roman piazza, adoptions, estrangements, dangerous migrations, the constant shuffle of human beings from place to place—asking how we reorient ourselves in the crossfire of constant, rapid, global transformation. Organized into four parts, the collection moves from the deeply personal to more global issues of interconnectedness. In language intensely lyrical, grounded in prehistory and science, Craft evokes questions of family and belonging that underscore a lifetime, gradually revealing the forces that shape us from the deepest reaches of time and place. As some birds sing to define their territory, so his poetry calls between the raggedness of daily life and our deeper yearning for coherence. Listen to an interview with and readings by the author via KUOW: http://kuow.org/post/what-i-learned-my-feminist-mom