Poetry: A Writers' Guide and Anthology

Description

Poetry: A Writers' Guide and Anthology is a complete introduction to the art and craft of writing poetry. The authors map out more than 25 key elements of poetry including image, lyric, point of view, metaphor, and movement and use these elements as starting points for discussion questions and writing prompts. The book guides the reader through a range of poetic modes including: - Elegy - Found poems - Nocturne - Ode - Protest poems - Ars Poetica - Lyric - Narrative Poetry also offers inspiring examples of contemporary poetry covering all the modes and elements discussed by the book, including poems by: Billy Collins, Sherman Alexie, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Natalie Diaz, Traci Brimhall, Terrance Hayes, Richard Blanco, Danez Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Mark Halliday, Eileen Myles, Mary Jo Bang, Tracy K. Smith, Ocean Vuong, and many others.

Amorak Huey teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University, Michigan, USA. He is recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and author of the poetry collection Ha Ha Ha Thump (2015) and the chapbooks The Insomniac Circus (2014) and A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (2016). His writing has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2012, The Southern Review, The Cincinnati Review, Poet Lore, Oxford American, Essay Daily, Brevity, The Collagist, and many other print and online journals. W. Todd Kaneko teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University, Michigan, USA. He is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (2014) and his poems, stories and essays have appeared in Bellingham Review, Los Angeles Review, Gulf Coast, Barrelhouse, PANK, The Normal School, and many other journals and anthologies. A Kundiman fellow, he co-edits the online literary magazine Waxwing.

With Poetry: A Writers' Guide and Anthology, it is as if Huey and Kaneko have been looking over my shoulder at my class notes and have built a streamlined textbook specifically to meet my needs. Collected in one volume are chapters of practical advice and explanation about poetic elements (including a periodic table!), along with an amazing, truly up-to-date anthology of example poems. Most appropriate for students new to poetry, this book will serve as a solid review text for more advanced students as well. * Sandy Longhorn, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Arkansas Writers MFA Program, University of Central Arkansas, USA * For a while now, many of us have seen the need to redefine - and hopefully to reinvigorate - the teaching of poetry writing. Amorak Huey and W. Todd Kaneko, by stressing "practice rather than interpretation," have made a poetry writing textbook that dances in the mind, even as it takes all of us back to the pleasure and hard work of our art. They are generous with the "elements" of poetry that animate their own teaching. Their illustrative anthology at the end may be the best collection of "contemporary classic" poems currently available. This is a book we - all of us, from beginners to wizened masters - could use in the classroom or simply sit down and read. * Keith Taylor, A.L. Becker Collegiate Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, University of Michigan, USA * "Write a poem for your future self to find," cajole Huey and Kaneko, the editors of this accessible and generative textbook, the first in a long time to be a great poetry primer, a fine anthology, and a useful encyclopedia. Elements, modes, images, surprise - the concepts and their applications are all here, detailed and methodically presented, the clear writing always a pleasure. Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology should be the go-to book for teachers and students alike, all of whom may well be writing to find their future selves. * Alan Michael Parker, Douglas C. Houchens Professor of English, Davidson College, USA *