"An award-winning poet and teacher demystifies poetry's most elusive element. In this accessible and distilled craft guide, acclaimed poet Tony Hoagland approaches poetry through the frame of poetic voice, that mysterious connective element that binds the speaker and reader together. A poem strong in the dimension of voice is an animate thing of shifting balances, tones, and temperatures, by turns confiding, vulgar, bossy, or cunning--but above all,...

A fearless, wide-ranging book on the state of poetry and American literary culture by Tony Hoagland, the author of What Narcissism Means to Me. Twenty Poems That Could Save America presents insightful essays on the craft of poetry and a bold conversation about the role of poetry in contemporary culture. Essays on the "vertigo" effects of new poetry give way to appraisals of Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, and Dean Young. At the heart of this book is an honesty...

"A collection of reviews and essays by David Orr, the New York Times poetry columnist and one of the most respected critics in America today, his best work of the past fifteen years in one place Poetry is never more vital, meaningful, or accessible than in the hands of David Orr. In the pieces collected here, most of them written originally for the New York Times, Orr is at his rigorous, conversational, and edifying best. Whether he is considering...

"A book of lectures by Dorothea Lasky, the author of Milk, Rome, Thunderbird, Black Life, and AWE"--

"Each of the twelve chapters of How Poems Get Made examines a specific aspect of the poetic medium: diction, syntax, rhythm, echo, figure, repetition, and more. Acclaimed poet and critic James Longenbach shows how a poet may manipulate these most basic elements of diction and syntax to create voice, image, tone, or song, and bring a poem to life. Why does a great lyric poem ask to be reread, even after we know it by heart? In How Poems Get Made, Longenbach...

Quick, joyful, and playfully astringent, with surprising comparisons and examples, this collection takes an unconventional approach to the art of poetry. Instead of rules, theories, or recipes, Singing School emphasizes ways to learn from great work: studying magnificent, monumentally enduring poems and how they are made. This anthology respects poetry's mysteries in two senses of the word: techniques of craft and strokes of the inexplicable. Pinsky's...

Looks at examples of poetry ranging from medieval to modern, discusses style and mode, and provides exercises for beginning and advanced writers.