Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology

Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology #2nd edition

by Amorak Huey, W. Todd Kaneko, Sean Prentiss (Series Editor)

Fully revamped and expanded, this second edition offers a complete introduction to the art and craft of writing poetry. Mapping out 38 foundational elements of poetry including image, line, point of view, metaphor, movement, and music, authors Amorak Huey and W. Todd Kaneko use these elements as starting points for discussion questions and writing prompts. The book guides readers through a range of poetic modes and styles such
o Elegies and Odes
o Found poems
o Aubades and Nocturnes
o Documentary and Protest poems
o Ars Poetica
o Lyric and Narrative poems
o Personas and Portraits
With a focus on contemporary poems, the anthology features a truly diverse and global line-up of poets and poems to illustrate the elements and craft discussed in the book. Featuring all-new chapters on traditional poetic forms, prosody, writing poems that engage the current moment, and the value and ethics of imitation, this is the ultimate companion to studying and practicing the craft of poetry.

Genres: Poetry

306 pages, Hardcover

First published February 22, 2024

Reviews

[Amorak Huey]

teaching with the second edition of our own book for the first time this fall ...

[Christina]

lots of great ideas on what is important about poetry, structured and written in a very clear way. useful for teaching--or at least, I anticipate that it will be.

[Peter Thwaites]

It's an excellent book, written in really lively prose and with some excellent poems. But despite that, it didn't really get me writing, as I'd hoped it would. The poems in the anthology section were really good but often intimidatingly dense and complex, and the book as a whole presented so many ideas and approaches that it felt overwhelming. I think if you're on a course and this is the source book, it'll work great. But reading it alone felt a bit hard to get to grips with.

[Raytown]

Not to be a curmudgeon, but I think it should have been made clear that 1) this book is a very basic textbook exclusively aimed at schoolchildren; 2) for a writer's guide, there is very little in the way of exercises or anything practice-based.

Neither did it help that I found more than half the poems included in the anthology to be dull & tedious af.

So I'm 100% the wrong audience for this, and as such I didn't find it useful at all but it's probably an OK choice if you're the target audience. I'll say this: it's very, very accessible.

[Kathleen]

Excited to teach this in future classes.

[Sophie]

- no rating
- ebook and physical book

[Gina]

This a great book for anyone who wants to learn how to run a poetry workshop or appreciate poetry in general. It also has a great list of poems listed by structure in the back of the book.

[Tom Murphy]

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've read a textbook with so much pleasure!

Smart, entertaining, inspiring, and useful.