A Poet's Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry - Hardcover

Finch, Annie Ridley Crane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0472116932 ISBN 13: 9780472116935

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2012

Synopsis

A Poet's Crafttranscends 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 Craftprovides 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.

About this title

From the Author

I've had the unusual experience of being exposed to many wildly different corners of the poetry world. I've performed in poetry slams in New York, studied meter and form in the Ivy League, workshopped in a free-verse centered graduate program, and argued theory with experimental and language poets.  I also grew up with a tradition of sharing classic popular poetry aloud.  All of these perspectives come into A Poet's Craft!
The book really has something for everyone.  Many readers have commented on the approachable tone and the great range of poems included. Personally, I love all the quotes on different aspects of poetry, which I spent a lifetime collecting.

About the Author

Annie Finch, poet, translator, and critic, is Director of the Stonecoast low-residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. She is coeditor, with Kathrine Varnes, of An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art and author of The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse, Eve, and Calendars. She is the winner of the eleventh annual Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award for scholars who have made a lasting contribution to the art and science of versification.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0472116932
• ISBN 13: 9780472116935
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 736