The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach

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What Customers Say About The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach:

Like all books, some things will work for you, and other things will not. Some writers have wonderful exercises that have helped me write and rewrite poetry. Even if you're not a poet, some of these exercises can help you. But overall, I like the way the book is divided. You can go straight to the section you love (or would love) to write about.

Some of the exercises stimulate the muse, while others are a bit brief.The index at the back should have covered topics and concepts.

These exercises are quite involved. I was hoping for some exercises for writing poetry in the high school classroom. These took quite a bit of time, but resulted in some good poems.

Very detailed, a little too structured for my taste. I would however, reccommend it to more disciplined poets or writers. Good to have as a reference tool.

I would have liked to see some of the poetry of the contributors to see if I wanted to investigate them further. It doesn't have a lot of data on the technical aspects of poetry (rhyme, meter, style, etc). The Practice of Poetry is a book that you (sometimes as an individual, sometimes in a group) do, more than a book you read. There is plenty of empty space where that could be done.As this book was published in 1992, the comment by contributor Agha Shahid Ali that ghazals are an unfamiliar form in American poetry is no longer true, as Robert Bly used them in his books "The Night Abraham Called To The Stars" and "My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy." Many of the poems referenced are now available on the internet, so the references as to where to obtain the poems mentioned in the book, and the poems of the contributors, are dated. It also doesn't address the various schools and movements of poetry. It has a lot of exercises on various aspects of poetry (mining the unconscious, writing in images and metaphors, what voice is being used, the use/misuse of strangeness, poetic structure, the poetry/music connection, and rewriting). It would be great if there was a new edition of this book. But the exercises are time-independent, and if you do them, your poetry will most likely improve.