Can you recommend any good books on writing poetry?

January 8, 2009 3:30 AM

Can you recommend any good books on writing poetry?

Hello all. I'm doing a creative writing class at the moment, and am about to start the poetry module. Can anyone recommend any books on writing poetry? NB - I am much less interested in books on appreciating, or criticising, poetry.

FWIW, I found John Gardner's "The Art Of Fiction" excellent help for my module in literary fiction, so if there is an analogous book for poetry, I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks!

posted by laumry to media & arts (16 comments total)

Stephen Fry wrote the extensive guide An Ode Less Travelled.
posted by ijsbrand at 3:35 AM on January 8 [2 favorites has favorites]

The Poets Manual and Rhyming Dictionary is an excellent resource. It covers a lot of poetic forms, talks about stresses and meter and all that. Maybe a little technical, but it doubles as a rhyming dictionary, and I think it's a must have.

Wild Mind and Writing Down The Bones are a bit hippy dippy, but there are good suggestions and the book will really make you want to write. There's an emphasis on automatic writing which I think is quite goods for poets too.

Be warned - There are so many books about writing poetry, and naive poets have a tendency to gravitate towards them. You don't need them, and in many cases they (along with writing courses) are more of a hindrance.

The best books to read (if you want to be a poet) are other poetry books. If you're thinking that you're different, or you don't need them - then you're wrong. Read poetry. Lots of poetry. And your writing will get better.
posted by seanyboy at 4:31 AM on January 8 [2 favorites has favorites]

In the Palm of Your Hand.
posted by tractorfeed at 4:51 AM on January 8

Peter Samson's Writing Poems is often cited as a good resource. I'm no great fan of his writing but James Fenton's An Introduction to English Poetry is a goo short introduction to the form in poetry.
posted by tallus at 5:18 AM on January 8

As someone who has an MFA in poetry, I second the advice to read a lot of poetry. One good place to start is the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. If you're interested in poetic forms (sonnets, etc.), try the Handbook of Poetic Forms. Even writers of free verse (the most common form nowadays) have something to gain from learning about the traditional forms. Have fun!
posted by Shoggoth at 5:33 AM on January 8 [1 favorite has favorites]

Lewis Turco's Book of Forms and Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook are pretty good. John Hollander's Rhyme's Reason is a lot of fun despite his being a scary curmudgeon. Anything you can get with exercises in it is fine though. Exercises are always useful, even if the assignment is goofy.

Overall I'd recommend reading a lot of poetry, recopying your favorites into notebooks and memorizing them.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:39 AM on January 8

Oh, and one more, which might be a little more of what you're looking for: The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach. There are lots of great exercises in here to get you started with the actual writing.
posted by Shoggoth at 5:42 AM on January 8 [1 favorite has favorites]

Poe wrote an interesting, perhaps tongue in cheek essay about writing the Raven called The Philosophy of Composition.
posted by minkll at 6:49 AM on January 8

I've taught poetry classes using Ted Kooser's Poetry Home Repair Manual nad Michelle Boisseau's Writing Poems. While both are fairly focused on crafting poetry, Writing Poems, especially, will help you through the basics of criticizing poetry as well. And definitely look into anthologies, but keep in mind that all anthology editors have their biases and none will give you a really complete overview.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:12 AM on January 8

+1 for Kooser's book, and also +1 for Kowit's "In The Palm of Your Hand".
I would also recommend Lyne's "Writing Poetry From The Inside Out".
posted by willmize at 7:16 AM on January 8

Read lot of quality poems. Write lots of poems. That will teach you the most. As for technical chops, I know of two good books: Rhyme's Reason and Writing Metrical Poetry.
posted by paulg at 7:29 AM on January 8

I found The Triggering Town pretty useful when I was starting out. It's a quick and interesting read, and has been one of the standard answers to this question for many years.
posted by theantikitty at 8:28 AM on January 8

PS: I agree with seanyboy. These books can be interesting to read, but almost without exception, the most helpful books I have read are other poetry books. The most useful exercise is to keep reading until you find a book of poems that blows your mind, and then try to understand what it would take to get some of that into your own writing.
posted by theantikitty at 8:30 AM on January 8

Chiming in to agree with those saying the best thing you can do is read as much good poetry as possible and then write as much poetry as possible. Some of those "poetry handbook" volumes mentioned upthread are nice enough for reference, but they're not going to teach you how to write authentic poems of your own. Don't make the mistake of thinking every poem you write will be great, or even good. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you have to write in the strict forms that the handbooks belabor in order to be a real poet (though you do absolutely need to feel the rhythms and tonalities and nuances of the language, even in "free verse).

Read the classics (whatever that means to you, from Psalms to Li Po to Wordsworth to Sylvia Plath) for a historical perspective -- but for pity's sake don't limit yourself to those unless you want to end up writing antiquated unreadable stuff that sounds like a mashup of T.S. Eliot and Shakespeare. (As a long-time editor of literary magazines, I can tell you a lot of people get stuck in that unfortunate mode.)

However -- and this surprises a lot of people -- there are tons of amazing books of poetry being published these days. Read as much as you can -- it's the opposite of the "garbage in garbage out" rule: if you voraciously consume a lot of wonderful poetry, if you have talent (there's the rub) it will teach and inspire you. Small Press Distributors carries a lot of the current, cool, authentic stuff. Be cautious in the Poetry aisle of the big box bookstores, where they load the shelves with high-profile mediocrities and "inspirational" stuff.

On preview: the Boisseau and Kowit books don't look too bad, if your instructor doesn't have a required text for the class.
posted by aught at 9:40 AM on January 8

Ezra Pound's ABC of Reading is going to seem, from its title, to be more about "appreciating, or criticising", but it's really just as applicable to the craft of writing. It's also awfully intimidating, but while the bar he sets (for readers, ostensibly, nevermind writers), is dated and maybe unrealistically high, it's still a good place to aim.

For instance, most people these days aren't going to be able to read the classics in their original Middle English, Greek, Latin, Chinese etc., but I don't think you can convincingly argue that something isn't lost in translation. Something, I think Pound would argue, that could/should inform your own writing.
posted by juv3nal at 1:12 PM on January 8

One thing I found taking poetry classes in grad school was that there was no good reference for poetry, and nearly all poetry classes were told solely through the lens of the professor and the poets that my professor preferred. One guy was a fan of "word-salad" poetry. Another was smitten with the works for Frost, Plath, someone else famous that I don't care enough to remember. Every professor I've ever studied poetry with likes to pretend that poetry didn't exist before around 1951.

What were - sort of - useful teaching tools was the poetry of other poets themselves, and an exercise called "imitation" where you write a poem in the style of a well-known poet. It's certainly interesting to do once or twice...

but a lot of poetry sounds exactly the same because of it.

You might also want to check out Poets and Writers magazine - not a textbook at all, but it does have helpful exercises in it from time to time.
posted by medea42 at 8:42 PM on January 8