Streams: Life Secrets for Writing Poems and Songs

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's treatise on poetry and songwriting, Streams.

First published by Prentice-Hall in 1978, Hochman's approach to teaching is just as unconventional and revelatory today as it was forty years ago.

From the Introduction by Hochman: This is a personal book that I hope will be like a friend. In a simple way I want to tell you some thoughts that I have about writing poetry and songs, and share with you some warm-up exercises for writing that can be used to limber up the mind the same way that dancers limber before a performance. Writing has always been for me a necessary experience― something that I feel compelled to do. If that feeling of wanting to write is inside of you―what I call the Necessary Angel wanting to speak―that writing can be a part of your life experience the way it is part of mine.

The author of six novels with three forthcoming from Turner Publishing, Sandra Hochman is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet with six volumes of poetry. She also authored two nonfiction books and directed a 1973 documentary, Year of the Woman, currently enjoying a renaissance. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, and she was a columnist for Harpers Bazaar. She also ran her own foundation, "You're an Artist Too" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to teach poetry and song writing to children ages 7–12 for fifteen years.