Creative Writing - Poetry: Books on Writing Poetry

Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study of versification by one of our best contemporary practitioners of traditional poetic forms. Emphasizing both the coherence and the diversity of English metrical practice from Chaucer’s time to ours, Timothy Steele explains how poets harmonize the fixed units of meter with the variable flow of idiomatic speech. He examines the ways in which poets have used meter, rhyme, and stanza to communicate and enhance meaning. Steele illuminates as well many practical, theoretical, and historical issues in English prosody, without ever losing sight of the fundamental pleasures, beauties, and insights that fine poems offer us. Written lucidly, with a generous selection of helpful scansions and explanations of the metrical effects of the great poets of the English language, All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing is not only a valuable handbook on technique; it is also a wide-ranging study of English verse and a mine of entertaining information for anyone wishing more fully to write, enjoy, understand, or teach poetry.

Excerpts from distinctive poems illustrate the author's appreciation of the metrical and formal aspects of poetry.

An indispensable guide for poets, readers, students, and teachers. The Poem's Heartbeat may well be the finest general book available on prosody. Each of the book's ten chapters is a progressive, step-by-step presentation rich with examples to illustrate concepts such as line, stress, scansion marks, slant rhyme, and iambic pentameter. Heartbeat also includes a selected bibliography and encourages readers and students to carry their investigations further.

Poets can't impose their will on the muse. That's why it's so important that you write regularly, keep reworking your drafts, and experiment in your writing. This book will help you by offering advice, inspiration, and hundreds of exercises to get you going--;all designed to invoke your muse. With no bias toward any form or style, John Drury addresses imagery, metaphor, and the different methods of constructing and experimenting with new poetic forms. You'll find twelve chapters overflowing with examples, exercises, and prompts--;all practical tools you can use right now in your poetry writing. No matter what your style or level of experience, Creating Poetry offers insightful, thoughtful, and motivating instruction all of which will make your path to poetry writing a richer path to travel.

Literature is a conversation--between writers and other writers, and between writers and readers. In Literature and Its Writers, Ann and Samuel Charters complement a rich and varied selection of stories, poems, and plays with an unparalleled array of commentaries about that literature by the writers themselves.

Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge is a poet and teacher who conducts workshops privately, as well as in the California Poets in the Schools program. Her exuberant, critically acclaimed teaching guide takes instructors, writers, and general readers into the very heart and intensity of life and the craft of expressing what one feels through the written word.

'Poetry is the sound of language organized in lines.' James Longenbach opens The Art of the Poetic Line with that essential statement. Through a range of examples - from Shakespeare and Milton to Ashbery and Gluck - Longenbach describes the function of line in metered, rhymed, syllabic and free-verse poetry. That function is sonic, he argues, and our true experience of it can only be identified in relation to other elements in a poem. A vital new resource by one of America's most important critics and one of poetry's most engaging practitioners.

The Poet's Companion presents brief essays on the elements of poetry, technique, and suggested subjects for writing, each followed by distinctive writing exercises. The ups and downs of writing life--including self-doubt and writer's block--are here, along with tips about getting published and writing in the electronic age. On your own, this book can be your "teacher," while groups, in or out of the classroom, can profit from sharing weekly assignments.

The former U. S. Poet Laureate, 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.

Three Genres gives students a basic introduction to fiction/ literary nonfiction, poetry, and drama and helps them to develop their creative skills in each area.  Each genre section is self-contained and includes complete works as examples along with helpful advice about how to draw on the variety of techniques they use.  The style is informal, practical, and positive.  Minot and Thiel encourage students to draw on their own experiences and develop skills on their own.