Poetry Writing: Theme and Variations

by David Starkey

Make reading and modeling an integral part of your creative writing class with "Poetry Writing: Theme and Variations". Students will learn both the style and the substance of poetry by modeling their writing on professional poems. Each chapter opens with one of fifty poems from a distinguished group of twentieth-century American writers, including Robert Frost, Rita Dove, Mary Tall Mountain, and Gary Soto. The text is organized chronologically by the poets' year of birth to help students see how history has affected the subjects and styles of poetry. The poetic elements and topics occurring in each of the model poems are discussed. A student's response is presented, allowing writers to see how other beginning poets respond to the models and encouraging them in their own writing. The "Your Turn" exercises prompt writers toward a response of their own based on the style, subject, or elements of the professional and student model poems.

246 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1999

About the author

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David Starkey directs the creative writing program at Santa Barbara City College.
Among his poetry collections are Starkey's Book of States (Boson Books, 2007), Adventures of the Minor Poet (Artamo Press, 2007), Ways of Being Dead: New and Selected Poems (Artamo, 2006), David Starkey's Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2002) and Fear of Everything, winner of Palanquin Press's Spring 2000 chapbook contest. A Few Things You Should Know about the Weasel will be published by the Canadian press Biblioasis next year.
In addition, over the past twenty years he has published more than 400 poems in literary journals such as American Scholar, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cutbank, Faultline, Greensboro Review, The Journal, Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Nebraska Review, Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, Poetry East, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, Southern Poetry Review, Sycamore Review, Texas Review, and Wormwood Review. He has also written two textbooks: Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008) and Poetry Writing: Theme and Variations (McGraw-Hill, 1999). With Paul Willis, he co-edited In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (Iowa, 2005), and he is the editor of Living Blue in the Red States (Nebraska, 2007). Keywords in Creative Writing, which he co-authored with the late Wendy Bishop, was published in 2006 by Utah State University Press.