Download or read book You Too Could Write a Poem written by David Orr and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of reviews and essays by David Orr, the New York Times poetry columnist and one of the most respected critics in America today, his best work of the past fifteen years in one place Poetry is never more vital, meaningful, or accessible than in the hands of David Orr. In the pieces collected here, most of them written originally for the New York Times, Orr is at his rigorous, conversational, and edifying best. Whether he is considering the careers of contemporary masters, such as Louise Glück or Frederick Seidel, sizing up younger American poets, like Matthea Harvey and Matthew Zapruder, or even turning his attention to celebrities and public figures, namely Oprah Winfrey and Stephen Fry, when they choose to wade into the hotly contested waters of the poetry world, Orr is never any less than fully persuasive in arguing what makes a poem or poet great—or not. After all, as Orr points out in his introduction, “Poetry is a lot like America, in the sense that liking all of it means that you probably shouldn’t be trusted with money, or scissors.” Orr’s prose is devoted to common sense and clarity, and, in every case, he brings to bear an impeccable ear, an openhandedness of spirit, and a deep wealth of technical knowledge—to say nothing of his shrewd sense of humor. As pleasurable as it is informative, Orr’s journalism represents a high watermark in the public discussion of literature. You, Too, Could Write a Poem is at heart a love note to poetry itself.
Download or read book The Hatred of Poetry written by Ben Lerner and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The novelist and poet Ben Lerner argues that our hatred of poetry is ultimately a sign of its nagging relevance"--
Download or read book Good Bones written by Maggie Smith and published by Tupelo Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring “Good Bones”—called “Official Poem of 2016” by the BBC/Public Radio International. Maggie Smith writes out of the experience of motherhood, inspired by watching her own children read the world like a book they've just opened, knowing nothing of the characters or plot. These are poems that stare down darkness while cultivating and sustaining possibility, poems that have a sense of moral gravitas, personal urgency, and the ability to address a larger world. Maggie Smith's previous books are The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo, 2015), Lamp of the Body (Red Hen, 2005), and three prize-winning chapbooks: Disasterology (Dream Horse, 2016), The List of Dangers (Kent State, 2010), and Nesting Dolls (Pudding House, 2005). Her poem “Good Bones” has gone viral—tweeted and translated across the world, featured on the TV drama Madam Secretary, and called the “Official Poem of 2016” by the BBC/Public Radio International, earning news coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, the Guardian, and beyond. Maggie Smith was named the 2016 Ohio Poet of the Year. “Smith's voice is clear and unmistakable as she unravels the universe, pulls at a loose thread and lets the whole thing tumble around us, sometimes beautiful, sometimes achingly hard. Truthful, tender, and unafraid of the dark....”—Ada Limón “As if lost in the soft, bewitching world of fairy tale, Maggie Smith conceives and brings forth this metaphysical Baedeker, a guidebook for mother and child to lead each other into a hopeful present. Smith's poems affirm the virtues of humanity: compassion, empathy, and the ability to comfort one another when darkness falls. 'There is a light,' she tells us, 'and the light is good.'”—D. A. Powell “Good Bones is an extraordinary book. Maggie Smith demonstrates what happens when an abundance of heart and intelligence meets the hands of a master craftsperson, reminding us again that the world, for a true poet, is blessedly inexhaustible.”—Erin Belieu
Download or read book Virgin written by Analicia Sotelo and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by Ross Gay as winner of the inaugural Jake Adam York Prize, Analicia Sotelo’s debut collection of poems is a vivid portrait of the artist as a young woman. In Virgin, Sotelo walks the line between autobiography and mythmaking, offering up identities like dishes at a feast. These poems devour and complicate tropes of femininity—of naiveté, of careless abandon—before sharply exploring the intelligence and fortitude of women, how “far & wide, / how dark & deep / this frigid female mind can go.” A schoolgirl hopelessly in love. A daughter abandoned by her father. A seeming innocent in a cherry-red cardigan, lurking at the margins of a Texas barbeque. A contemporary Ariadne with her monstrous Theseus. A writer with a penchant for metaphor and a character who thwarts her own best efforts. “A Mexican American fascinator.” At every step, Sotelo’s poems seduce with history, folklore, and sensory detail—grilled meat, golden habañeros, and burnt sugar—before delivering clear-eyed and eviscerating insights into power, deceit, relationships, and ourselves. Here is what it means to love someone without truly understanding them. Here is what it means to be cruel. And here is what it means to become an artist, of words and of the self. Blistering and gorgeous, Virgin is an audacious act of imaginative self-mythology from one of our most promising young poets.
Download or read book We Wish You Could Write Poetry Too written by Clinton Gardner and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2013-06-16 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a compilation of the poems written over a 25 year time period. The topics are varied as is the abilities of the author. Some of the poems are very good, while others were a waste of paper. Inspiration is a funny thing and one never knows what idea might strike next. This project was merely an attempt to get all the scraps of paper and blog entries in one place so family and friends could read his attempts at poetry if they felt a need to punish themselves.
Download or read book Keep Moving written by Maggie Smith and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The NATIONAL BESTSELLER from the author of YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL “A meditation on kindness and hope, and how to move forward through grief.” —NPR “A shining reminder to learn all we can from this moment, rebuilding ourselves in the darkness so that we may come out wiser, kinder, and stronger on the other side.” —The Boston Globe “Powerful essays on loss, endurance, and renewal.” —People For fans of Glennon Doyle, Cheryl Strayed, and Anne Lamott, a collection of quotes and essays on facing life’s challenges with creativity, courage, and resilience. When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem “Good Bones,” started writing inspirational daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
Download or read book The New World written by Kelly Schirmann and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hybrid collection of poetry and prose, The New World follows the attempts, failures, and re-attempts at understanding and articulating an era of immense social upheaval, political corruption, and environmental consequence. In five distinct sections, the book refracts, explores and investigates these global themes through the realm of the personal and private. Old journals and notes are revisited as a way of understanding the self and its various revisions and mistakes. The New World tells the story of escapism and arrival, growth and decay, and despair and optimism as they occur, often simultaneously, within the mind of our narrator. The book asks, "How do you write poems in a country like this?", inviting every reader to take stock of themselves, and to reassess the ways "One human world / [empties] completely / into the bigger one."
Download or read book I Could Pee on This Too written by Francesco Marciuliano and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There's a new cat in town! This feisty sibling of the international bestseller I Could Pee on This will be making its own sensational mark in the cat-poetry world. I Could Pee on This, Too explores fresh feline emotions and philosophical musings through cats' own poetry, such as "Welcome New Cat," "Sleeping My Life Away," and "You Also Live Here." Any cat lover who's longed for a deeper look into the enigmatic world of their cats will fall whiskers over paws for this well-versed follow-up.
Download or read book Father s Day written by Matthew Zapruder and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As seen in the The New York Times Book Review ""In characteristically short lines and pithy, slippery language like predictive text from a lucid dream, Zapruder’s fifth collection grapples with fatherhood as well as larger questions of influence and inheritance and obligation."" —The New York Times “[Zapruder] presents powerfully nuanced and vivid verse about the limitations of poetry to enact meaningful change in a world spiraling into callousness; yet despite poetry’s supposed constraints, Zapruder’s verse offers solace and an invaluable blueprint for empathy.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review “Zapruder’s new book, Father’s Day, is firmly situated in its (and our) political moment, and is anchored by a compelling gravity and urgency.” ―The Washington Post The poems in Matthew Zapruder’s fifth collection ask, how can one be a good father, partner, and citizen in the early twenty-first century? Zapruder deftly improvises upon language and lyricism as he passionately engages with these questions during turbulent, uncertain times. Whether interrogating the personalities of the Supreme Court, watching a child grow off into a distance, or tweaking poetry critics and hipsters alike, Zapruder maintains a deeply generous sense of humor alongside a rich vein of love and moral urgency. The poems in Father’s Day harbor a radical belief in the power of wonder and awe to sustain the human project while guiding it forward. "
Download or read book Why Poetry written by Matthew Zapruder and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An impassioned call for a return to reading poetry and an incisive argument for poetry’s accessibility to all readers, by critically acclaimed poet Matthew Zapruder In Why Poetry, award-winning poet Matthew Zapruder takes on what it is that poetry—and poetry alone—can do. Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. In lively, lilting prose, he shows us how that misunderstanding interferes with our direct experience of poetry and creates the sense of confusion or inadequacy that many of us feel when faced with it. Zapruder explores what poems are, and how we can read them, so that we can, as Whitman wrote, “possess the origin of all poems,” without the aid of any teacher or expert. Most important, he asks how reading poetry can help us to lead our lives with greater meaning and purpose. Anchored in poetic analysis and steered through Zapruder’s personal experience of coming to the form, Why Poetry is engaging and conversational, even as it makes a passionate argument for the necessity of poetry in an age when information is constantly being mistaken for knowledge. While he provides a simple reading method for approaching poems and illuminates concepts like associative movement, metaphor, and negative capability, Zapruder explicitly confronts the obstacles that readers face when they encounter poetry to show us that poetry can be read, and enjoyed, by anyone.
Download or read book Beautiful Pointless written by David Orr and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-04-12 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "David Orr is no starry-eyed cheerleader for contemporary poetry; Orr’s a critic, and a good one. . . . Beautiful & Pointless is a clear-eyed, opinionated, and idiosyncratic guide to a vibrant but endangered art form, essential reading for anyone who loves poetry, and also for those of us who mostly just admire it from afar." —Tom Perrotta Award-winning New York Times Book Review poetry columnist David Orr delivers an engaging, amusing, and stimulating tour through the world of poetry. With echoes of Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, Orr’s Beautiful & Pointless offers a smart and funny approach to appreciating an art form that many find difficult to embrace.
Download or read book The Art of Voice Poetic Principles and Practice written by Tony Hoagland and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning poet, teacher, and “champion of poetry” (New York Times) demystifies the elusive element of voice. In this accessible and distilled craft guide, acclaimed poet Tony Hoagland approaches poetry through the frame of poetic voice, that mysterious connective element that binds the speaker and reader together. A poem strong in the dimension of voice is an animate thing of shifting balances, tones, and temperatures, by turns confiding, vulgar, bossy, or cunning—but above all, alive. The twelve short chapters of The Art of Voice explore ways to create a distinctive poetic voice, including vernacular, authoritative statement, material imagination, speech register, tone-shifting, and using secondary voices as an enriching source of texture in the poem. A comprehensive appendix contains thirty stimulating models and exercises that will help poets cultivate their craft. Mining his personal experience as a poet and analyzing a wide range of examples from Catullus to Marie Howe, Hoagland provides a lively introduction to contemporary poetry and an invaluable guide for any practicing writer.
Download or read book I Love My Bike written by Simon Mole and published by Frances Lincoln Limited. This book was released on 2024-05-07 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I Love My Bike tells the story of a girl's first experience with her bike, and is filled with beautiful illustrations and a heartwarming message of perseverance. There's a flame on the frame and I love how it feels from my head to my heels when my feet push the pedals and the pedals turn the wheels. I love my bike. I Love My Bike is a picture book about a daughter learning to ride a bike with the help of her father. It's also about that exhilarating feeling you get when you succeed at something for the first time as a child. And, most importantly, it's about learning that when you fall off, the best thing to do is get back on again! The story is told through wonderful watercolours from critically acclaimed artist Sam Usher, with words from children's poet Simon Mole. Celebrating both family relationships and being outdoors, this is the perfect read for families everywhere.
Download or read book A Poetry Handbook written by Mary Oliver and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1994 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poet Mary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter and rhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems from Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts an extraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space. "Stunning" (Los Angeles Times). Index.
Download or read book In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works written by John Lennon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An omnibus edition of two works of John Lennon’s “fascinating…whimsy” (The Sunday Times, London) poetry, prose, and drawings that will “jolt [you] into gusts of laughter” (The Guardian). A humorous compilation of poetry, prose, and artwork from two of John Lennon’s classic works, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works. Known as the Beatles’s Renaissance man, Lennon is widely regarded as one of the most impactful musicians in history. Originally published in 1964, this “quirky, funny collection of stories, poems, and drawings” (The New York Times) is a must-have for John Lennon and Beatles fans everywhere.
Download or read book Letters to a Young Poet written by Rainer Maria Rilke and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2021-04-14 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers, and anyone with an interest in Rainer Maria Rilke, German poetry, or the creative impulse, these ten letters of correspondence between Rilke and a young aspiring poet reveal elements from the inner workings of his own poetic identity. The letters coincided with an important stage of his artistic development and readers can trace many of the themes that later emerge in his best works to these messages—Rilke himself stated these letters contained part of his creative genius.
