The Hatred of Poetry

The Hatred of Poetry
Author: Ben Lerner
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2016-06-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0865478201

"The novelist and poet Ben Lerner argues that our hatred of poetry is ultimately a sign of its nagging relevance"--

On Poetry

On Poetry
Author: Glyn Maxwell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2016-11-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0674265874

“This is a book for anyone,” Glyn Maxwell declares of On Poetry. A guide to the writing of poetry and a defense of the art, it will be especially prized by writers and readers who wish to understand why and how poetic technique matters. When Maxwell states, “With rhyme what matters is the distance between rhymes” or “the line-break is punctuation,” he compresses into simple, memorable phrases a great deal of practical wisdom. In seven chapters whose weird, gnomic titles announce the singularity of the book—“White,” “Black,” “Form,” “Pulse,” “Chime,” “Space,” and “Time”—the poet explores his belief that the greatest verse arises from a harmony of mind and body, and that poetic forms originate in human necessities: breath, heartbeat, footstep, posture. “The sound of form in poetry descended from song, molded by breath, is the sound of that creature yearning to leave a mark. The meter says tick-tock. The rhyme says remember. The whiteness says alone,” Maxwell writes. To illustrate his argument, he draws upon personal touchstones such as Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. An experienced teacher, Maxwell also takes us inside the world of the creative writing class, where we learn from the experiences of four aspiring poets. “You master form you master time,” Maxwell says. In this guide to the most ancient and sublime of the realms of literature, Maxwell shares his mastery with us.

Fear of Description

Fear of Description
Author: Daniel Poppick
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 67
Release: 2020-08-27
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0141992689

These poems tell the story of a generation in crisis: at odds with its own ideals, precariously (or just un-) employed, and absolutely terrified of seeing itself in the planet's future. Is our contemporary moment pure tragedy, or a dark joke? Can it be both? Ranging between elegiac lyrics and autobiographical accounts of a group of poets moving from Iowa to Brooklyn in the years just before and after the 2016 election, Fear of Description reinvigorates the prose poem, exploring the slippery terrain between grief and friendship, artifice and technology, writing and ritual, hauntings and obsessions - searching for joy in art but instead finding it in pitch darkness. As the narrative cuts back and forth in time and circles around itself, the stories which begin to emerge in this remarkable book - of dead dogs speaking through Ouija boards, lives cut short, and youthful brilliance - explore at once the struggle to find one's place in the world, and the fear of being trapped once there.

A Sand Book

A Sand Book
Author: Ariana Reines
Publisher: Tin House Books
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2019-06-18
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1947793330

Longlisted for the National Book Award "Mind-blowing." —Kim Gordon DEADPAN, EPIC, AND SEARINGLY CHARISMATIC, A Sand Book chronicles climate change and climate grief, gun violence and bystanderism, state violence and complicity, mourning and ecstasy, sex and love, and the transcendent shock of prophecy, tracking new dimensions of consciousness for our strange and desperate times.

Against Silence

Against Silence
Author: Frank Bidart
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 51
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0374603529

An urgent new collection from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and “one of the undisputed master poets of our time” (Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR) Words, voices reek of the worlds from which they emerge: different worlds, each with its all but palpable aroma, its parameters, limitations, promise. Words—there is a gap, nonetheless always and forever, between words and the world— slip, slide, are imprecise, BLIND, perish. • Set up a situation,— . . . then reveal an abyss. For more than fifty years, Frank Bidart has given voice to the inner self, to the depths of his own psyche and the unforgettable characters that populate his poems. In Against Silence, the Pulitzer Prize winner’s eleventh collection of poetry, Bidart writes of the cycles we cannot escape and the feelings we cannot forget. Our history is not a tabula rasa but a repeating, refining story of love and hate, of words spoken and old cruelties enacted. Moving among the dead and the living, the figures of his life and of his past, Bidart calls reality forth—with nothing settled and nothing forgotten, we must speak.

The Police

The Police
Author: Daniel Poppick
Publisher: Omnidawn
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781632430342

A debut collection unraveling the mythologizing forces of control

Forms of a World

Forms of a World
Author: Walt Hunter
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2019-01-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0823282236

What happens when we think of poetry as a global literary form, while also thinking the global in poetic terms? Forms of a World shows how the innovations of contemporary poetics have been forged through the transformations of globalization across five decades. Sensing the changes wrought by neoliberalism before they are made fully present, poets from around the world have creatively intervened in global processes by remaking poetry’s formal repertoire. In experimental reinventions of the ballad, the prospect poem, and the ode, Hunter excavates a new, globalized interpretation of the ethical and political relevance of forms. Forms of a World contends that poetry’s role is not only to make visible thematically the violence of global dispossessions, but to renew performatively the missing conditions for intervening within these processes. Poetic acts—the rhetoric of possessing, belonging, exhorting, and prospecting—address contemporary conditions that render social life ever more precarious. Examining an eclectic group of Anglophone poets, from Seamus Heaney and Claudia Rankine to Natasha Trethewey and Kofi Awoonor, Hunter elaborates the range of ways that contemporary poets exhort us to imagine forms of social life and enable political intervention unique to but beyond the horizon of the contemporary global situation.

In Such Hard Times

In Such Hard Times
Author: Yingwu Wei
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2009
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1556592795

Presents one hundred fifty poems in Chinese and English translation by a classic eighth-century Chinese poet little known in the West, with explanatory notes accompanying each one.

Crossing the Unknown Sea

Crossing the Unknown Sea
Author: David Whyte
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2002-04-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1573229148

Crossing the Unknown Sea is about reuniting the imagination with our day to day lives. It shows how poetry and practicality, far from being mutually exclusive, reinforce each other to give every aspect of our lives meaning and direction. For anyone who wants to deepen their connection to their life’s work—or find out what their life’s work is—this book can help navigate the way. Whyte encourages readers to take risks at work that will enhance their personal growth, and shows how burnout can actually be beneficial and used to renew professional interest. He asserts that too many people blindly trudge through a mediocre work life because so many “busy” tasks prevent significant reflection and analysis of job satisfaction. People often turn to spiritual practice or religion to nurture their souls, but overlook how work can actually be our greatest opportunity for discovery and growth. Crossing the Unknown Sea combines poetry, gifted storytelling and Whyte’s personal experience to reveal work’s potential to fulfill us and bring us closer to ultimate freedom and happiness.

The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop

The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
Author: Diane Lockward
Publisher: eBookIt.com
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2015-03-05
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1456624245

The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop is a poetry tutorial designed to inform and inspire poets. It includes model poems and prompts, writing tips, and interviews with poets. Organized into ten sections, the book covers such concepts as Diction, Sound, Voice, and Imagery. It is geared towards the experienced poet as well as those just getting started and is ideal for individual use at home or group use in the classroom or workshop. Contributors include fifty-six of our nation's finest poets, thirteen of them current or former state poets laureate. Contributors: Kim Addonizio, JoAnn Balingit, Ellen Bass, Jan Beatty, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Robert Bense, Pam Bernard, Michelle Bitting, Deborah Bogen, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Edward Byrne, Kelly Cherry, Philip F. Deaver, Bruce Dethlefsen, Caitlin Doyle, Patricia Fargnoli, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Amy Gerstler, Karin Gottshall, Jennifer Gresham, Bruce Guernsey, Marilyn Hacker, Jeffrey Harrison, Lola Haskins, Jane Hirshfield, Gray Jacobik, Rod Jellema, Richard Jones, Julie Kane, Adele Kenny, Dorianne Laux, Sydney Lea, Hailey Leithauser, Jeffrey Levine, Diane Lockward, Denise Low, Jennifer Maier, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Jeffrey McDaniel, Wesley McNair, Susan Laughter Meyers, Bronwen Butter Newcott, Alicia Ostriker, Linda Pastan, Stanley Plumly, Vern Rutsala, Martha Silano, Marilyn L. Taylor, Matthew Thorburn, Lee Upton, Nance Van Winckel, Ingrid Wendt, Nancy White, Cecilia Woloch, Baron Wormser, Suzanne Zweizig An additional forty-five accomplished poets contributed sample poems inspired by the prompts in this book.