Mind's Eye, The: A Guide to Writing Poetry

by Kevin Clark

The Mind’s Eye , written by a published poet, focuses on imagery and sound and has the added benefit of being concise, inexpensive, and handy. Contemporary poetry as well as traditional form is discussed, with an emphasis on contemporary poets ― more than ninety of them ― and three student poets. Chapters deal with difficult topics such as racism, war, mortality, gender, and more.

Genres: Poetry, Writing, Crafts, Read For School, School

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 2007

Reviews

[Teacherhuman · Rating 5 out of 5]

clear and lovely! full of lessons to pass on to my poets in the making!

[D.E. Chandler]

This book was truly inspirational. I loved it!

[stephani iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

assigned to read this for poetry workshop prep - always forget how much I love this shit let's go

[Sophie Pike · Rating 4 out of 5]

(A bit late in my logging of this one) Read for class, and was pretty interesting. Some helpful tips and lots of good poems and exercises. Didn’t fully agree with everything Clark said, but overall a good and helpful beginning guide to writing poetry.

[Jessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent guide for any student with or without a teacher.

[Vivian Zenari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid intro of what a person could do in poetry. I appreciated its organization, which emphasizes contemporary free verse poetry. Traditional forms are discussed later.

[Gabriella · Rating 3 out of 5]

i read this book for the form & technique of poetry class. i was definitely not the target audience for this book because i have experience reading and writing poetry. i generally didn't like how clark talked about poetry, but it had some helpful and/or interesting insights. i would not recommend this book, but it could be helpful for some poetry beginners.

[Tarn Wilson]

A college textbook for beginning poets. Good overview, helpful vocabulary, great prompts, nice sample poems.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
A good introduction to poetry for the very beginning student, or one who does not have any grasp on poetry at all. Full of contemporary poets as well. The last several chapters, which are devoted to different types of poetry (love poems, elegies, etc.) can get rendundant and sweeping in their generalizations.

[Kelci Schmidt · Rating 1 out of 5]

While some of the poems included to illustrate particular elements of craft were interesting, the analyses of said poems were trite, condescending, and shallow. The very few writing prompts the text offers are fine, but nothing new. I'm not sure if this is just an issue with my copy of the book, but the "Poet's Notecard" sections look like they were printed with like, the ten cent copier at the public library- dark and grainy almost to the point of illegibility (although frankly, these "notecards" are basically garbage, so it's not like not being able to read them is too devastating). Overall, for a text that claims to be a guide, The Mind's Eye does very little guiding; the only useful thing I took away from reading it was a few new poets to check out, and there are much better anthological sources for that kind of thing. I honestly can't even see this book being useful to a beginning poet.

[D'Argo Agathon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it's hard to rate "writing guides" like this... but this book has a lot of interesting and thought provoking sections, examples, and exercises. A good read if you are thinking about really applying yourself to poetry, but nothing can teach you to write, other than to write.

[Abby Starkel]

This book was not for me. It showed a lot of poetry pieces and told why each one was good for numerous reasons. I did find a few interesting pieces in this book, but for the most part, it was too informative for my liking.

[Tori-Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Kevin Clark's guide for beginning poets. Part instructional guidebook, part workbook, it is the perfect balance. I loved the exercises he included at the end of every chapter I found myself doing them eagerly. Definitely one of the best I have used so far.

[Coriander · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really great basic guide to different forms of poetry and their functions and how they can be used. Without forcing you to always use these rules, but experiment with them and use the rules yet also discard and work how you like.

[Anh Thuy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prof. Gloria never fail me in choosing his awesome textbooks :)