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› Find signed collectible books: 'ABC of Reading'
Ezra Pounds classic book about the meaning of literature.
This important work, first published in 1934, is a concise statement of Pounds aesthetic theory. It is a primer for the reader who wants to maintain an active, critical mind and become increasingly sensitive to the beauty and inspiration of the worlds best literature. With characteristic vigor and iconoclasm, Pound illustrates his precepts with exhibits meticulously chosen from the classics, and the concluding Treatise on Meter provides an illuminating essay for anyone aspiring to read and write poetry. ABC of Reading displays Pounds great ability to open new avenues in literature for our time. [via]More editions of ABC of Reading:

› Find signed collectible books: 'All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle on Poetics'
Aristotle's much-translated On Poetics is the earliest and arguably the best treatment that we possess of tragedy as a literary form. The late Seth Benardete and Michael Davis have translated it anew with a view to rendering Aristotle's text into English as precisely as possible. A literal translation has long been needed, for in order to excavate the argument of On Poetics one has to attend not simply to what is said on the surface but also to the various puzzles, questions, and peculiarities that emerge only on the level of how Aristotle says what he says and thereby leads one to revise and deepen one's initial understanding of the intent of the argument. As On Poetics is about how tragedy ought to be composed, it should not be surprising that it turns out to be a rather artful piece of literature in its own right.
Benardete and Davis supplement their edition of On Poetics with extensive notes and appendices. They explain nuances of the original that elude translation, and they provide translations of passages found elsewhere in Aristotle's works as well as in those of other ancient authors that prove useful in thinking through the argument of On Poetics both in terms of its treatment of tragedy and in terms of its broader concerns. By following the connections Aristotle plots between On Poetics and his other works, readers will be in a position to appreciate the centrality of this work for his entire thought.
In an introduction that sketches the overall interpretation of On Poetics presented in hisThe Poetry of Philosophy (St. Augustine's Press, 1999; see p. 33 of this catalogue), Davis argues that, while On Poetics is certainly about tragedy, it has a further concern extending beyond poetry to the very structure of the human soul in its relation to what is, and that Aristotle reveals in the form of his argument the true character of human action. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle: Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle Poetics/Longinus on the Sublime/Demetrius on Style'
This volume brings together the three most influential ancient Greek treatises on literature. Aristotle's Poetics contains his treatment of Greek tragedy: its history, naturne, and conventions, with details on poetic diction. Stephen Halliwell makes this seminal work newly accessible with a reliable text and a translation that is both accurate and readable. His authoritative introduction traces the work's debt to earlier theorists (especially Plato), its distinctive argument, and the reasons behind its enduring relevance.
The essay On the Sublime, usually attributed to "Longinus" (identity uncertain), was probably composed in the first century CE; its subject is the appreciation of greatness ("the sublime") in writing, with analysis of illustrative passages ranging from Homer and Sappho to Plato. In this edition, Donald Russell has revised and newly annotated the text and translation by W. Hamilton Fyfe, and supplied a new introduction.
The treatise On Style, ascribed to an (again unidentifiable) Demetrius, was perhaps composed during the secod century BCE. It is notable particularly for its theory and analysis of four distinct styles (grand, elegant, plain, and forceful). Doreen Innes' fresh rendering of the work is based on the earlier Loeb translation by W. Rhys Roberts. Her new introduction and notes represent the latest scholarship.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle's on the Art of Poetry'
This book, "Aristotle, On the art of poetry (1920)", by Aristotle, Bywater, Ingram, 1840-1914, Murray Gilbert, is a replication of a book originally published before 1920. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible. This book was created using print-on-demand technology. Thank you for supporting classic literature. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle's Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Art and Craft of Poetry'
This book is about the making of a poet - you. It's written in a particular order to help you develop both yourself as a poet and your poetic works. You begin with a chapter on generating ideas for poems and end with a chapter on the total poem, summarizing key elements in the creation of publishable verse. You'll find three sections in this book: . Journals and Genres: In this section you'll learn how to conceive ideas for poems based on life experience, research and familiarity with traditional genres of poetry. You'll learn how poets use journals to keep track of ideas, and how to develop your ability to contemplate, observe and discover - skills that make superior poets. When you've finished the exercises in this section, you'll have as many as one hundred ideas for poems. Tools of the Trade: Here you'll learn the basics of craft. There are six chapters that focus on voice, line, stanza, title, meter and rhyme. At the end of each chapter you'll write a draft of a poem, focusing on skills learned in that chapter. Formats and Forms: In this section you'll learn about modes and methods of expression, from narrative, lyric and dramatic verse (the traditional formats) to poems in fixed, free and sequence styles (the traditional forms). Here is where you begin work on your drafts, identifying which categories they fall into, studying them and then improving upon them. You'll find dozens of poems by some of the world's most talented contemporary writers. Many of these poets also provide comments about the craft of writing poetry, which adds yet another level of instruction. Also included are poems of great English and American writers, along with work by the author. By including his ownwork, Bugeja is able to illustrate the process of writing poetry in a unique, step-by-step format. What's more, three levels of exercises at the end of each chapter help you generate poems and, ultimately, chapbooks and books. Everything you need to put you on the path of becoming a [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Best Words, Best Order: Essays on Poetry'
As its title implies, Stephen Dobyns's rigorous collection of essays about poetry celebrates Coleridge's dictum that poetry is the best words in the best order. Dobyns's probing examinations of the elements of poetry--metaphor, pacing, tone--and his study of the evolution of free verse are not for Sunday-sunset versifiers. They are strenuous, meaty, and wholly satisfying fare, intended for serious students of poetry. Dobyns, the author of eight volumes of poetry (and 17 novels), believes, like Baudelaire, that "each poem ... has an optimum number of words [and] an optimum number of pieces of information ... and to go over or under even by one word weakens the whole." Poetry, he says, belongs to the reader, not the writer, and as readers, "at the close of the poem, we must not only feel that our expectations have been met but that our lives have been increased, if only to a small degree." And, if that's not challenge enough for the writer, add to it "that the conclusion of a given piece must appear both inevitable and surprising." The final third of the book comprises chapters on four writers, each of whom represents to Dobyns an ideal in poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke, who Dobyns says worked harder than any other poet to develop and change his work; Osip Mandelstam, an exemplar of moral centeredness; Anton Chekhov, for his sense of personal freedom; and Yannis Ritsos, for his "sense of the mystery that surrounds us." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Book of Forms : A Handbook of Poetics'
Companion to the Book of Literary Terms, an indispensable handbook, revised and updated for today's users. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Book of Forms a Handbook of Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'De Arte Poetica Liber'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Flexible Lyric'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love With Poetry'
Edward Hirsch's primer may very well inspire readers to catch the next flight for Houston and sign up for any and all of his courses. Not for nothing does this attentive and adoring poet-teacher title his book How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry; Hirsch's big guide to getting the most out of this form is packed with inspiring examples and thousands of epigrams and allusions. Above all, he is intent on poetry's physical and emotional power. In chapters devoted to the lyric, the narrative, the poetry of sorrow, of ecstasy, of witness, Hirsch continually conveys the sheer ecstasy of this vital act of communication. (He takes us, for instance, with great care and mounting excitement, through Emily Brontë's "Spellbound," which he discovered at age 8 when "baseball season was over for the year.") Above all, there is the thrill of discovery as Hirsch offers up works by artists ranging from Anna Akhmatova to Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop to Adam Zagajewski, and everyone in between. I defy you not to fall in love with Wislawa Szymborska on the basis of "The Joy of Writing," which begins:
Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?Elsewhere, Hirsch's section on Sterling Brown's redefinitions of African American work songs should put this neglected poet back on the map. And his introductions to Eastern European poets such as Jirí Orten, Attila József, and Miklós Radnóti will make you want to ferret out their hard-to-find work. (Perhaps his publisher should put out a companion anthology...)
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Hirsch manages to cram entire worlds and lives into 258 pages of text (which he follows up with a huge glossary and extended reading list). His two paragraphs on Juan Gelman, whose son was murdered and pregnant daughter-in-law disappeared during Argentina's "Dirty War," bring this man's art into clear, tragic focus. But even here, the compulsively generous author is compelled to enshrine the words of other critics, foregrounding Eduardo Galeano and Julio Cortázar, who describes Gelman's art as "a permanent caress of words on unknown tombs." What a pleasure it is to be inside Hirsch's head! He seems to have read everything and absorbed most of it, and he wears his considerable scholarship lightly. Many of his fellow poets have suffered for their art, have been imprisoned and killed--but above all, Hirsch makes us realize that, no matter what the artist's circumstances, subject, or theme, "the stakes are always high" in this game that writer and reader alike must keep playing. --Kerry Fried [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Letters to a Young Poet'
It would take a deeply cynical heart not to fall in love with Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. At the end of this millennium, his slender book holds everything a student of the century could want: the unedited thoughts of (arguably) the most important European poet of the modern age. Rilke wrote these 10 sweepingly emotional letters in 1903, addressing a former student of one of his own teachers. The recipient was wise enough to omit his own inquiries from the finished product, which means that we get a marvelously undiluted dose of Rilkean aesthetics and exhortation.
The poet prefaced each letter with an evocative notation of the city in which he wrote, including Paris, Rome, and the outskirts of Pisa. Yet he spends most of the time encouraging the student in his own work, delivering a sublime, one-on-one equivalent of the modern writing workshop:
Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside.Every page is stamped with Rilke's characteristic grace, and the book is free of the breathless effect that occasionally mars his poetry. His ideas on gender and the role of the artist are also surprisingly prescient. And even his retrograde comment on the "beauty of the virgin" (which the poet derives from the fact that she "has not yet achieved anything") is counterbalanced by his perception that "the sexes are more related than we think." Those looking for an alluring image of the solitary artist--and for an astonishing quotient of wisdom--will find both in Letters to a Young Poet. --Jennifer Buckendorff [via]
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Letters written over a period of several years on the vocation of writing by a poet whose greatest work was still to come.
From the Paperback edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Letters to a Young Poet/the Possibility of Being'
Letters To A Young Poet... The Possibility of Being. By Rainer Maria Rilke. Two complete works. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Literary Essays of Ezra Pound'
Pound, Literary Essays. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms'
The Making of a Poem is among the best how-to-read-poetry titles. Edited by two of our greatest living poets, one Irish and female, the other American and male, it is both an exploration of poetic forms and an anthology. Eavan Boland and Mark Strand each offer an introduction and then give us a series of chapters devoted to particular verse forms--the sonnet, the ballad, the sestina, the villanelle, blank verse, the stanza--as well as a long section devoted to what they somewhat vaguely call shaping forms. This refers to poetic structures established not by a specific rhyme and/or metrical pattern but by content: the elegy, for example, or the pastoral or ode. The book then concludes with a section on open forms. Each chapter is conveniently subdivided, each topic simply defined: a single page gives "The Ballad at a Glance" (or, for that matter, the pantoum) as a quick overview of the form's structure. A page or two on the history of the form follows, along with a brief comment on "the contemporary context." Then a chronological anthology of poems demonstrates the particular form. In the sonnet's case, for instance, we are treated to 23 brilliantly chosen examples--everything from Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" to Seamus Heaney's "The Haw Lantern" to Mary Jo Salter's playful "Half a Double Sonnet." The section then concludes with another brief analysis of one example. In this spot, the villanelle features Elizabeth Bishop's classic heartbreaker, "One Art," and blank verse gives us far too brief a take on Robert Frost's tantalizing "Directive." Itself worth the price of admission, the poem begins:
Back out of all this now too much for us,One can readily see both the advantages and the limitations of such a format: definitions are kept lean, at times approaching the sound bite, and the short sentences and brief paragraphs often seem designed for a readership more accustomed to journalism than to the complexities of Dante (see, for example, the one-page history of the sestina). All of this looks like an attempt to reach an audience of both college students and general readers. While more information might help (brief comments on why certain poems in the anthology are defined as odes, pastorals, or elegies, for example), the bottom line is that The Making of a Poem does an excellent job of taking the inexperienced reader inside the mystery of poetic form. In these terms the volume succeeds, giving us a way into the history of poetry, along with an excellent anthology as a starting point for a deeper exploration of the glories of the genre. --Doug Thorpe [via]
Back in a time made simply by the loss
of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more than a house
Upon a farm that is no more than a farm
And in a town that is no more than a town.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Necessary Angel'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'
From abecedarius to zeugma, by way of cywydd, estribillo, Nibelungenstrophe, Tachtigers, and other poetic terms that sound like poetry, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics is a gold mine for readers and writers of poetry alike. First published in 1965, this tome has evolved to reflect developments in critical thinking and an expanding knowledge of non-Western poetry (without, heaven forfend, being trendy: "a reference work," the editors explain, "must always distance itself from its time while it works to embrace that time"). For this third edition, the editors write, nearly every entry has been changed significantly, and 162 entries have been added. The preface claims coverage of every poetic tradition in the world, and one doesn't doubt it. There's enough material here to keep one browsing well past Yeats's "Second Coming." If that's not enough to quench your poetic thirst, fret not: a detailed bibliography concludes each entry. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within'
I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it.
Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled
Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. Many of us have never been taught to read or write poetry and think of it as a mysterious and intimidating form. Or, if we have been taught, we remember uncomfortable silence when an English teacher invited the class to "respond" to a poem. In The Ode Less Travelled, Fry sets out to correct this problem by giving aspiring poets the tools and confidence they need to write poetry for pleasure.
Fry is a wonderfully engaging teacher and writer of poetry himself, and he explains the various elements of poetry in simple terms, without condescension. His enjoyable exercises and witty insights introduce the concepts of Metre, Rhyme, Form, Diction, and Poetics. Aspiring poets will learn to write a sonnet, on ode, a villanelle, a ballad, and a haiku, among others. Along the way, he introduces us to poets we've heard of, but never read. The Ode Less Travelled is a lively celebration of poetry that makes even the most reluctant reader want to pick up a pencil and give it a try. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978'
In this collection of prose writings, one of America's foremost poets and feminist theorists reflects upon themes that have shaped her life and work.
At issue are the politics of language; the uses of scholarship; and the topics of racism, history, and motherhood among others called forth by Rich as "part of the effort to define a female consciousness which is political, aesthetic, and erotic, and which refuses to be included or contained in the culture of passivity." [via]More editions of On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978:

› Find signed collectible books: 'On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On Poetry and Style'
Contains the 'Poetics' and the first twelve chapters of the 'Rhetoric, Book III'. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry'
"We wanted to create a book," say poets Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux in their introduction to The Poet's Companion, "that would focus on both craft and process." The book they have created is an impassioned exploration of poetry writing that addresses subject matter, craft, and the writing life. The reigning wisdom is that poets, like other creative writers, should write what they know. "The trick," say the authors, "is to find out what we know, challenge what we know, own what we know, and then give it away in language." Elsewhere they add that, while "as poets, we need to write from our experience ... that experience may be mental, emotional, and imaginative as well as physical."
Addonizio and Laux are lively spokespersons for the poet's life; they pepper their thoughts with well-chosen poems from their contemporaries--including David Bottoms, Jack Gilbert, Linda Gregg, and Jane Kenyon--and they conclude each short chapter with an invigorating collection of ideas for writing. These "ideas" culminate in a terrific section of writing exercises at book's end: write a poem describing "your most acutely embarrassing moment"; "write a poem of praise for an unlikely group of people, things, ideas"; "write a poem about the last time you saw a loved one you lost." I found myself a bit frustrated by the brevity of the discussions (most chapters are under 10 pages) and a bit put off by the first person plural narrative (do Addonizio and Laux really agree on everything they say they agree on?), but these are mere quibbles. This is a fine book indeed. --Jane Steinberg [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Poet's Guide to Poetry'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poetic Meter and Poetic Form'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poetics'
The original, Aristotle's short study of storytelling, written in the fourth century B.C., is the world's first critical book about the laws of literature. Sure, it's 2400 years old, but Aristotle's discussions--Unity of Plot, Reversal of the Situation, Character--though written in the context of ancient Greek Tragedy, Comedy and Epic Poetry, still apply to our modern literary forms. The book is quite short, and Aristotle illuminates his points with clear examples, making the Poetics perfectly readable, the better to impress people at parties when you say, "Of course, as Aristotle says..." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poetics I'
Richard Janko's acclaimed translation of Aristotle's "Poetics" is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko's translations with notes of both the "Tractatus Coislinianus", which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the "Poetics", and fragments of Aristotle's "Dialogue On Poets", including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poetics I With the Tractatus Coislinianus: A Hypothetical Reconstruction of Poetics II'
Richard Janko's acclaimed translation of Aristotle's "Poetics" is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko's translations with notes of both the "Tractatus Coislinianus", which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the "Poetics", and fragments of Aristotle's "Dialogue On Poets", including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poetics of the New American Poetry'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poetics of Aristotle: Translation and Commentary'
Incorporating the best modern work on the Poetics, Halliwell's translation is aimed at those who want a reliable version of Aristotle's ideas along with concise and stimulating guidance. A running commentary explains the structure and detail of Aristotle's argument, attempts to provoke further thought about the work's strengths and weaknesses, and offers suggestions on relating the Poetics to later stages of literary theory and practice. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poetics of Aristotle'
Classic work from the Ancient Greek philosopher, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, who laid down the foundations of Western philosophy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poetics of Reverie'
In this, his last significant work, an admired French philosopher provides extraordinary meditations on the relation between the imagining consciousness and the world, positing the notion of reverie as its most dynamic point of reference. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poetics of Space'
This is a deep, magical, densely captivating book about space, our homes, how we live in them, and how dwellings and space affect us; it is as much a book of philosophy as a work of serious literature. It requires careful, preferably leisurely reading, with the possibility of moments to pause and digest and re-read the words. It will change the way you look at your home and your life, providing a deeper, more insightful relationship with the spaces you occupy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Poetry Handbook'
This slender guide by Mary Oliver deserves a place on the shelves of any budding poet. In clear, accessible prose, Oliver (winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for poetry) arms the reader with an understanding of the technical aspects of poetry writing. Her lessons on sound, line (length, meter, breaks), poetic forms (and lack thereof), tone, imagery, and revision are illustrated by a handful of wonderful poems (too bad Oliver was so modest as to not include her own). What could have been a dry account is infused throughout with Oliver's passion for her subject, which she describes as "a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind." One comes away from this volume feeling both empowered and daunted. Writing poetry is good, hard work. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice For Beginning Poets'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poetry, Language, Thought'
Essential reading for students and anyone interested in the great philosophers. "[A] first-rate translation preceded by an excellent introduction . . . [a] very valuable collection."--Review of Metaphysics [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Proofs and Theories'
Winner of the 1993 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Non-Fiction, Proofs and Theories is an illuminating collection of essays by Louise Glück, whose most recent book of poems, The Wild Iris, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Glück brings to her prose the same precision of language, the same incisiveness and insight that distinguish her poetry. The force of her thought is evident everywhere in these essays, from her explorations of other poets' work to her skeptical contemplation of current literary critical notions such as "sincerety" and "courage." Here also are Glück's revealing reflections on her own education and life as a poet, and a tribute to her teacher and mentor, Stanley Kunitz. Proofs and Theories is the testament of a major poet.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse'
In the grand tradition of Alexander Pope, John Hollander offers this explication/enactment of poetic form. There are sonnets about how to write sonnets, haiku about how to write haiku, and so on. The writing is clever, entertaining, and instructive, which will surprise no one familiar with Hollander's work. What's even more impressive, though, is how often these poems--which could so easily start to feel like homework--engage you emotionally. The sestina about sestinas is beautiful, and, excepting Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," Hollander's villanelle about villanelles is as captivating an example as one will find of the old French fixed form. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse'
Just as dancing is "the art of moving in accord with a pattern," says Mary Oliver, so is writing metrical verse. "One sorts out the pattern, one relies on it, and relaxes from effort to pleasure." The rules (concerning rhyme, line length, and pattern) are made if not to be deliberately flouted, then at least to be toyed with. Oliver claims to have written this book for both writers and readers of metrical verse, but it is an odd sort of fit for either. A writer might wish for a little more detail; a reader might find too much. The book works best as a kind of refresher course, for those who have forgotten the difference between metaphysical and Petrarchan conceits, between masculine and feminine rhymes, and would like to brush up a bit. Oliver does a wonderful job of explaining why the most common forms of metrical verse came to prevail (for instance, the five-foot line is "the line which is the closest to the breathing capacity of our lungs"), and of nudging us into reading more metrical poetry (nearly half this volume is devoted to works by John Donne, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and others). Blessedly, Oliver reminds us that, though one could get carried away trying new meters and forms, one shouldn't expect to be writing a lot of double ionics anytime soon. "Expect to use one hypersyllabic foot in ten years, perhaps," she says. "Anacrusis, rarely. Catalexis: often. The double ionic: when the next comet flies over." --Jane Steinberg [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Selected Writings'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Theology for the Social Gospel'
A Theology for the Social Gospel is undoubtedly Walter Rauschenbusch's most enduring work. It is here that Rauschenbusch, the father of the social gospel in the United States, articulates the theological roots of social activism that surged forth from mainline Protestant churches in the early part of the twentieth century. Skillfully examining the great theological issues of the Christian faith--sin, evil, salvation, and the kingdom of God--Rauschenbauch offers a powerful justification for the church to fully engage society.
The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing'
Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town, originally published in 1979, remains one of the freshest and most refreshing treatises on the writing of poetry. While you won't find formality or nicety here, Hugo has the unusual quality of being highly opinionated and yet not at all convinced that what works for him will work for you. Hugo doesn't believe that he can teach you how to write; he believes he can teach you how he writes, and by doing so, teach you "how to teach yourself how to write." And while most writing instructors claim that one can't be a good writer without being a good reader, Hugo claims "that one learns to write only by writing." Hugo's essays are strong-willed and funny and by turns full of bluster and cloaked in modesty. While "a good teacher can save a young poet years by simply telling him things he need not waste time on, like trying to will originality or trying to share an experience in language or trying to remain true to the facts," he writes, "ultimately the most important things a poet will learn about writing are from himself in the process." Above all, Hugo stresses that creative writing is creative because it is a creative act: "if one is writing the way one should, one does not know what will be on the page until it is there." So, he warns, "If you want to communicate, use the telephone." And "Think small.... If you can't think small, try philosophy or social criticism." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The White Goddess : A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth'
Robert Graves, the late British poet and novelist, was also known for his studies of the mythological and psychological sources of poetry. With The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Graves was able to combine many of his passions into one work. While the book is so poetically written that many of the passages amount to prose poems, it is also frequently plot driven enough to feel like a novel, and it is rich with scholarly insight into the deep wells of poetry. Especially fascinating is the chapter in which Graves explores the ancient and ongoing practice of poets' invoking the muse. Graves details the practice in both the Eastern and Western literary traditions, and shows specific similarities and differences among Greek, British, and Irish tales and myths about the muse. Graves has much to offer students of history and myth, but poetry lovers will also be fascinated with The White Goddess. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'La Poetique'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cartas a Un Joven Poeta/ Letters for a Young Poet'
Estas CARTAS A UN JOVEN POETA, publicadas mas de veinte anos despues de la muerte de su autor, fueron dirigidas por RAINER MARIA RILKEde su concepcion del mundo, desde su vision de la vocacion y de la inspiracion literarias hasta sus meditaciones sobre la soledad inherente a la tarea del creador. [via]
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