New books on writing poetry.
Highlights of Poetry.
Index of poetry.
How to Write Poetry.
Books read.
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How to write specific forms:
Haibun.
Haiku.
Hay(na)ku.
Rengay.
Tanka.
Concrete.
Ghazal.
Lai.
Pantoum.
Prose poem.
Rondeau.
Rubáiyát.
Sestina.
Skaldic verse.
Sonnet.
Terza rima.
Triolet.
Tritina.
Villanelle.
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Poets:
Adam Zagajewski.
Aleda Shirley.
Anne Carson.
The Beowulf Poet.
Billy Collins.
Billy Collins exercise.
Snorri's Edda.
Carl Dennis.
Charles Atkinson.
Corey Marks.
François Villon
Franz Wright.
Galway Kinnell.
Gary Young.
The Gawain Poet.
Jack Gilbert.
Jane Hirshfield.
Jorie Graham.
Karen Braucher.
Karl Shapiro.
Kay Ryan.
Laureate Poets: Britain;
USA.
Louise Glück.
Len Anderson.
Li Young Lee.
Linda Pastan.
Nordic Skalds.
Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A).
Richard Hugo.
Robert Bly.
Sara Teasdale.
Snorri's Edda.
Stephen Dunn.
Ted Kooser.
W.S. Merwin.
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Books:
| Ararat. Averno. Descending Figure. Firstborn. The Garden. |
| The House on Marshland. Meadowlands. Seven Ages. The Triumph of Achilles. |
| Vita Nova. The Wild Iris. |
Time line.
Links and Books.
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| Book log for Glück's Ararat. |
"My mother want to know why, if I hate family so much, I went ahead and had one. ... I must learn to forgive my mother, now that I'm helpless to spare my son." © Louise Glück |
"My sister and I reached the same conclusion: the best way to love us was to not spend time with us." © Louise Glück |
"in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved." © Louise Glück |
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| Book log for Glück's Meadowlands. |
Outliers: one poem has 35 stanzas, one has 42, one has 43, and one has 47.
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| Book log for Glück's Seven Ages. |
"How deeply fortunate my life, my every prayer heard by angels. I asked for the earth; I received earth, like so much mud in the face." © Louise Glück |
and which ends:
"I was a winged obsessive, my moonlit feathers were paper. I lived hardly at all among men and women; I spoke only to angels. How fortunate my days, how charged and meaningful the nights' continuous silence and opacity." © Louise Glück |
"That is the problem of silence
one cannot test one's ideas.
Because they are not ideas, they are the truth."
© Louise Glück
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The problem with most of these 'you' poems is that when I try to work out who is the 'you' I am distracted from the poem.
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| Book log for Glück's The Triumph of Achilles. |
"the artist lies because he is obsessed with attainment, that he perceives the summit as that place where he will live forever, a place about to be transformed by his burden: with every breath, I am standing at the top of the mountain. Both my hands are free. And the rock has added height to the mountain." © Louise Glück |
"Always in these friendships one serves the other, one is less than the other: the hierarchy is always apparent, though the legends cannot be trusted -- their source is the survivor, the one who has been abandoned." © Louise Glück |
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| Book log for Glück's Vita Nova. |
"No one wants to be the muse; in the end, everyone wants to be Orpheus." © Louise Glück |
and which ends:
"my anguish ...
remains the struggle for form
and my dreams ...
less the wish to be remembered
than the wish to survive,
which is, I believe, the deepest human wish."
© Louise Glück
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The problem with most of these 'you' poems is that when I try to work out who is the 'you' I am distracted from the poem.
with three single-stanza poems of 20, 23, and 42 lines.
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| "The case for nonsense is not the same as the case against meaning. It belongs, in literature, to the holy fool and the cryptic sprite; in religion, to the visionary or the seer; in philosophy, to the Sphinx and the Zen master. ... Such art asks, inevitably, a kind of consent of the reader. Or, in Peter Streckfus's unforgettable first book, more active cooperation. What is transacted here between poet and reader has less to do with the reader's being convinced by elegant or passionate argument, and more to do with seduction. And the instrument of our seduction, for once, is not charm but mesmerizing beauty." |
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Related pages:
Books of Poetry Form.
Alphabetic list of poetry forms and related topics.
Poetry Home-Sweet-Home.
How to Write Poetry.
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Copyright © 2006 by Joan Zimmerman, except for the quoted poems.
All rights reserved. |