The Poet's Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Contemporary American Poets

"This wonderfully instructive collection of journal writings, notebooks, jottings . . . , workbook fragments leads us into the corners of the mind where poetry hides."―Miami Herald

The Poet's Notebook brings together excerpts from the working notebooks of twenty-six American poets. Unsystematic, spontaneous, irreverent, intense, witty, unexpected, these notebooks shimmer with reflections, speculations, confessions, quotations, impressions, and ruminations. They create a portrait of the artist as a purposeful gatherer and sifter of every kind of experience.

Included are the notebooks from such distinguished and eclectic voices as Rita Dove, Stephen Dunn, Carolyn Forché, Donald Hall, Garrett Hongo, Joy Harjo, Donald Justice, Yusef Komunyakaa, James Merrill, Mary Oliver, Charles Simic, and William Stafford.

Stephen Kuusisto is the author of Only Bread, Only Light (poems) and Planet of the Blind. He is professor of English and disability studies at Ohio State University and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Deborah Tall and David Weiss teach at Hobart and William Smith colleges and live in Ithaca, New York.