How to Rhyme Your Way to 'Metaphor Poems': For Poets-to-be & Teachers-to-be

by Leland Jamieson

How to Rhyme Your Way to ‘Metaphor Poems’ is a passionately reasoned manifesto against dying MFA poetry written in broken prose. It is a “how-to” assertion, and illustration, of the return to formally metered and rhymed forms in post-9/11 language and sentiment. By writing out loud with your lips, fingers, and ears, this book helps you master the 'whats', 'hows', and 'whys', hands-on, step by step. Using a minimum of technical jargon, the strategy of this volume is to invite high school seniors and college freshmen readers to leap across a canyon of misunderstanding by a writing process the book models. The setting is a fictional college class in Freshman English. This little giant of a book frees a 'poet-to-be' to feel at ease and find new creativity composing contemporary 'formal' poetry. It liberates a 'teacher-to-be' to feel at ease coaching students, including skeptical students. It encourages creativity long-term as well, continuing to deepen your poetry the further you take this strategy. An illustrative 14-poem selection of the author's work rich in metaphors is proof of the pudding. References for advanced study appear at the end.

62 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 29, 2012