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The Art of Poetry Writing: A Guide For Poets, Students, & Readers
Poet, novelist, scholar, translator, playwright, and teacher, William Packard has known every side of a writer's life. As founder and editor of The New York Quarterly, a national magazine devoted to the craft of poetry, he reads some 50,000 poems each year-most of them sadly deficient in sound, metrics, form, voice, and quality. This book is written to help poets address the central concerns of their craft and art.
Lively, inspiring, opinionated, and sometimes curmudgeonly, The Art of Poetry Writing covers a broad range of topics, both technical and personal, that all poets need to
-Poetic devices and diction
-Verse forms and free verse
-Rhyme and metrics
-Creative vision and revision
-The benefits and problems of workshops and writing classes
-30 writing challenges to develop form and style and technique
-When to seek publication-and when not to
-What to read while writing
-The life of the poet, including keeping a journal, giving readings, applying for grants, and more.
Remarks by and excerpts from the work of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Dickinson, Yeats, Auden, Stevens, Moore, Thomas, Ginsberg, Sexton, Plath, Dickey, Bukowski, Ashbery, and dozens of other poets make this an essential companion for students, teachers and anyone who writes or reads poetry.
Lively, inspiring, opinionated, and sometimes curmudgeonly, The Art of Poetry Writing covers a broad range of topics, both technical and personal, that all poets need to
-Poetic devices and diction
-Verse forms and free verse
-Rhyme and metrics
-Creative vision and revision
-The benefits and problems of workshops and writing classes
-30 writing challenges to develop form and style and technique
-When to seek publication-and when not to
-What to read while writing
-The life of the poet, including keeping a journal, giving readings, applying for grants, and more.
Remarks by and excerpts from the work of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Dickinson, Yeats, Auden, Stevens, Moore, Thomas, Ginsberg, Sexton, Plath, Dickey, Bukowski, Ashbery, and dozens of other poets make this an essential companion for students, teachers and anyone who writes or reads poetry.
- GenresPoetryWritingNonfiction
240 pages, Hardcover
First published June 15, 1992
2 people are currently reading
153 people want to read
About the author
William Packard
113 books5 followersPackard was born September 2, 1933 and was raised in New York. A graduate of Stanford University, where he earned a degree in Philosophy and studied under the poet and critic Yvor Winters, Packard was a presence in the literary circles of the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1950s and 60's — circles that included Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Patchen, and Kenneth Rexroth. Packard was most active, however, in New York City, where he lived and wrote for more than half his life.
While in New York, Packard hosted the 92nd Street Y’s poetry reading series, was Vice President of the Poetry Society of America, and was co-director of the Hofstra Writers Conference for seven years. In 1957 he was awarded a Frost Fellowship and, in 1980, was honored with a reception at the White House for distinguished American poets.
Packard's literary career spanned nearly 50 years and resulted in the publication of six volumes of poetry, including "To Peel an Apple," "First Selected Poems," "Voices/I hear/voices," and "Collected Poems." His novel, "Saturday Night at San Marcos," was heralded as "a bawdy, irreverent send-up of the literary scene." His translation of Racine’s "Phedre," for which he was awarded the Outer Critic’s Circle Award, is the only English rendering to date to have maintained the original’s rhymed Alexandrine couplets, and was produced Off-Broadway with Beatrice Straight and Mildred Dunnock. His plays include "The Killer Thing," directed by Otto Preminger, "Sandra and the Janitor," produced at the HB Playwrights Foundation, "The Funeral," "The Marriage," and "War Play," produced and directed by Gene Frankel. Three collections of Mr. Packard’s one-act plays, "Psychopathology of Everyday Life," "Threesome," and "Behind the Eyes," were recently produced in New York. He was the great-grandson of Evangelist Dwight L. Moody and wrote the non-fiction book "Evangelism in America: From Tents to TV."
Beginning in 1965, when he inherited from Louise Bogan the poetry writing classes at New York University’s Washington Square Writing Center, Packard taught poetry and literature at NYU, Wagner, The New School, Cooper Union, The Bank Street Theatre, and Hofstra, as well as acting, and playwriting at the HB Studio in Manhattan. He is the author of the textbooks "The Art of the Playwright," "The Art of Screenwriting," "The Poet’s Dictionary," "The Art of Poetry Writing," and "The Poet’s Craft: Interviews from the New York Quarterly."
For his work with the New York Quarterly (NYQ), which he founded in 1969, Packard was called "one of the great editors of our time" by poet and novelist James Dickey. Cited by Rolling Stone as "the most important poetry magazine in America," the New York Quarterly earned a reputation for excellence by publishing poems and interviews with the prominent poets W. H. Auden, John Ashbery, Paul Blackburn, Richard Eberhart, Stanley Kunitz, Anne Sexton, Charles Bukowski, and W.S. Merwin, among many others. In fact, NYQ has, in its thirty-year career, published virtually every important poet in the nation. But the magazine is equally acclaimed for supporting the work of lesser-known poets. The poet Galway Kinnell once said of the magazine, "The New York Quarterly serves an invaluable function — and that is finding and publishing wonderful talents — such as Franz Douskey, Antler, Pennant, Lifshin, Inez, Moriarty — who may not have the recognition that their work so richly deserves."
The New York Quarterly temporarily suspended publication when Packard suffered a stroke, but returned to print shortly before his death.
While in New York, Packard hosted the 92nd Street Y’s poetry reading series, was Vice President of the Poetry Society of America, and was co-director of the Hofstra Writers Conference for seven years. In 1957 he was awarded a Frost Fellowship and, in 1980, was honored with a reception at the White House for distinguished American poets.
Packard's literary career spanned nearly 50 years and resulted in the publication of six volumes of poetry, including "To Peel an Apple," "First Selected Poems," "Voices/I hear/voices," and "Collected Poems." His novel, "Saturday Night at San Marcos," was heralded as "a bawdy, irreverent send-up of the literary scene." His translation of Racine’s "Phedre," for which he was awarded the Outer Critic’s Circle Award, is the only English rendering to date to have maintained the original’s rhymed Alexandrine couplets, and was produced Off-Broadway with Beatrice Straight and Mildred Dunnock. His plays include "The Killer Thing," directed by Otto Preminger, "Sandra and the Janitor," produced at the HB Playwrights Foundation, "The Funeral," "The Marriage," and "War Play," produced and directed by Gene Frankel. Three collections of Mr. Packard’s one-act plays, "Psychopathology of Everyday Life," "Threesome," and "Behind the Eyes," were recently produced in New York. He was the great-grandson of Evangelist Dwight L. Moody and wrote the non-fiction book "Evangelism in America: From Tents to TV."
Beginning in 1965, when he inherited from Louise Bogan the poetry writing classes at New York University’s Washington Square Writing Center, Packard taught poetry and literature at NYU, Wagner, The New School, Cooper Union, The Bank Street Theatre, and Hofstra, as well as acting, and playwriting at the HB Studio in Manhattan. He is the author of the textbooks "The Art of the Playwright," "The Art of Screenwriting," "The Poet’s Dictionary," "The Art of Poetry Writing," and "The Poet’s Craft: Interviews from the New York Quarterly."
For his work with the New York Quarterly (NYQ), which he founded in 1969, Packard was called "one of the great editors of our time" by poet and novelist James Dickey. Cited by Rolling Stone as "the most important poetry magazine in America," the New York Quarterly earned a reputation for excellence by publishing poems and interviews with the prominent poets W. H. Auden, John Ashbery, Paul Blackburn, Richard Eberhart, Stanley Kunitz, Anne Sexton, Charles Bukowski, and W.S. Merwin, among many others. In fact, NYQ has, in its thirty-year career, published virtually every important poet in the nation. But the magazine is equally acclaimed for supporting the work of lesser-known poets. The poet Galway Kinnell once said of the magazine, "The New York Quarterly serves an invaluable function — and that is finding and publishing wonderful talents — such as Franz Douskey, Antler, Pennant, Lifshin, Inez, Moriarty — who may not have the recognition that their work so richly deserves."
The New York Quarterly temporarily suspended publication when Packard suffered a stroke, but returned to print shortly before his death.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 8, 2023
In 1992, William Packard’s The Art of Poetry Writing hit bookstores via St. Martin’s Press. Among his list of accolades in the literary arts, Packard published six volumes of poetry, founded New York Quarterly, and was the vice president of The Poetry Society of America before he passed away in 2002.
I purchased my copy of this how-to craft book after attending a writer’s conference during which a workshop facilitator (a middle-aged white man) said it was essential reading for any serious poet.
Because I purchase almost any book recommended to me, I immediately pulled out my phone to order. After sitting on my shelf for five months, I finally cracked it open to absorb all the poetic wisdom this poetic ancestor could instill.
Outdated information
Flipping through the “Nuts and Bolts” chapter, if a writer hopes this book will give insights on how to publish poems in literary magazines or apply for grants, I will not say this book is useless, but it has not aged well. One would not in our modern age search a reference library for a list of grant prizes available to writers and poets, for example. So, those chapters really have no modern use unless one has no access to the internet. (But if one has access to a library, they have access to the internet.)
Boring examples
Two aspects of Packard’s writing in particular made finishing this guide challenging: The first was the examples he used. Almost all come from the standard long-dead-white-man’s club of Blake, Whitman, Poe, Wordsworth, Milton, Shakespeare, etc. The occasional Anne Sexton or Langston Hughes example was thrown in for good measure, but you could count those examples on one (perhaps two) hands out of the entire collection.
Moreover, so few poets of the modern millennium (that I have read, anyway, and I read a lot), write in rhymed and metered verse. I certainly don’t. So, reading examples with all the “doths” and “thys” and stilted syntax in order to make a metered rhyme didn’t move me in any way. These examples are the reason people outside the poetry world think poetry is dead. They only know poetry as what they learned in their high school English classroom. They “don’t get it” because these poems weren’t written for them, in their time, in their language/dialect.
I love poetry. My life revolves around poetry. And I was bored a lot reading this book.
Packard is kinda… a dick…
The other aspect of Packard’s writing that I struggled through was his “Kids These Days”-esque judgment, particularly in regards to poetry readings. Slam poetry, perhaps not having as big of an influence on the poetry world at the time of his writing, but he essentially ridicules poets who enjoy stage performance.
For example he wrote, “…[T]he great majority of modern poets preferred the page to the stage; it would be difficult to imagine Emily Dickinson giving a poetry reading, or Charles Baudelaire, or Hart Crane.”
Is Baudelaire who died in 1867 considered a “modern” poet? Was he considered so in 1992?
Throughout his book, he also chastises the idea of “careerism” but doesn’t specify his exact definition of what that means. Should no one take into consideration their career when producing work? That seems very unrealistic if one wants to eat every day and/or have a place to live. Maybe in an ideal world where we don’t live our lives navigating a capitalist hellscape with skyrocketing rents and inflated costs of goods, one could completely not consider how their work might build their career. But then, one could argue that Packard himself had a literary career … so, is there only one correct way of achieving and maintaining a career from poetry? Should no one aim for a career in poetry, but if a career just happens to fall into their lap, then great? If one does write to further their career, does that then make them less-than? Lack integrity? What, William?
He wrote “…[M]ost of the poets out there… their cover letters boast of prestigious grants, cushy academic jobs, numerous publications in trendy mags, all the while they’re raising cute nuclear families and holding onto their secure tenure tracks… Well as the man said, you can’t serve two masters at the same time. You can’t live bunny lives and write tiger poetry, simultaneously. If anyone out there wants to write with originality and honesty and recklessness, then he or she may have to change a lot of things about the life they’re living before they can turn out the kind of poetry that we’d be interested in seeing.”
You heard it here first, folks! Abandon your children and your jobs if you want to be a true *French accent* artiste.
Contrary to this criticism of “careerism,” the lines of thought I am constantly met with in the present literary world are: “Will publishers be able to sell what you’re creating?” “To whom will they sell it?” “Who is your target audience?” “What is your marketing plan?”
That is… if you’re not, like, Chekov (whom Packard sites as an ideal example of not pursuing “careerism”) and you’re not a medical doctor who then also writes great literary works on the side. (Reminds me of all the trial lawyers who dream of writing crime novels, but who don’t actually have the time or energy because they’re too busy making money from a career that brings them no joy or fulfillment.)
If I was supposed to have a different career that then funded my writing so I didn’t fall victim to wanting to strategize a career from my writing, then… whoops! Sounds like that was written by a privileged man who wasn’t also responsible for child bearing/rearing or caretaking for elderly parents or any other responsibility that would make having a full-time career ON TOP OF writing possible.
Notable quotes
All of this being said, what I did enjoy from Packard’s book was the plethora of notable quotes from mostly other writers that are peppered throughout the work. A leave those here:
“Most of the Romantics shared a common view: they believed in a reverence for Nature and a belief that the child was Nature’s priest, who had innocence and primal consciousness unconditioned by civilization. — Packard
“You know now the sorrow of continually doing something that you cannot name, of producing automatically as an apple tree produces apples this thing there is no name for.” — John Ashbery
“I know with the poems that I thought were most private, most unshareable, the ones I would not show, would certainly not print, later when I have shown them, they were the ones that people have gone to.” — Muriel Rukeyser
“Ut pictura, poesis” [As in pictures, so in poems] — Horace
“Every line of poetry can be divided into separate ‘feet’ — the ‘foot’ deriving from the Greek chorus in tragedy, where chorus members would stamp out long and short rhythms with their feet.” — Packard
“The strange word, the metaphor, the ornamental equivalent, etc., will save the language from seeming mean and prosaic, while the ordinary words in it will secure the requisite clearness.” — Aristotle
“Nihil est in intellectus quod non primus in sensus” [Nothing is in the mind that is not first in the senses.] — Aristotle
“The universal exists for, and shines through, the particular.” — Aristotle
“Laborare est orare” [To work is to pray] — Latin proverb
“Without ceasing Practise [sic] nothing can be done. Practise is Art. If you leave off you are lost.” — William Blake
“The most that a good teacher can do is to try and create a climate of approval, a generous spirit of permission, so that his class can experiment and explore and engage in word play for its own sake. A student should be encouraged to feel that any impulse that comes to him is worth developing and elaborating and bringing to a skillful realization.” — Packard
“There are so many self-appointed critics of creativity who are so adept at ridiculing the inept, there is no reason for a teacher of poetry to join in this chorus of scorn” — Packard (hypocritically, he writes this right after writing “The housewife with her sentimental sonnets to the sunrise, the student crusader with his social protest poems, the pompous philosopher with his endless epigrams on existence — these must all be confronted and show the triviality of their ways.” Yuck. Talk about pompous judgment. )
Lastly
and ironically, I enjoyed this quote from Vladimir Nabokov: “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”
I say “ironically” because I will not be rereading Packard’s manual on poetry. It will find a new home in the closest Free Little Library to my apartment.
I purchased my copy of this how-to craft book after attending a writer’s conference during which a workshop facilitator (a middle-aged white man) said it was essential reading for any serious poet.
Because I purchase almost any book recommended to me, I immediately pulled out my phone to order. After sitting on my shelf for five months, I finally cracked it open to absorb all the poetic wisdom this poetic ancestor could instill.
Outdated information
Flipping through the “Nuts and Bolts” chapter, if a writer hopes this book will give insights on how to publish poems in literary magazines or apply for grants, I will not say this book is useless, but it has not aged well. One would not in our modern age search a reference library for a list of grant prizes available to writers and poets, for example. So, those chapters really have no modern use unless one has no access to the internet. (But if one has access to a library, they have access to the internet.)
Boring examples
Two aspects of Packard’s writing in particular made finishing this guide challenging: The first was the examples he used. Almost all come from the standard long-dead-white-man’s club of Blake, Whitman, Poe, Wordsworth, Milton, Shakespeare, etc. The occasional Anne Sexton or Langston Hughes example was thrown in for good measure, but you could count those examples on one (perhaps two) hands out of the entire collection.
Moreover, so few poets of the modern millennium (that I have read, anyway, and I read a lot), write in rhymed and metered verse. I certainly don’t. So, reading examples with all the “doths” and “thys” and stilted syntax in order to make a metered rhyme didn’t move me in any way. These examples are the reason people outside the poetry world think poetry is dead. They only know poetry as what they learned in their high school English classroom. They “don’t get it” because these poems weren’t written for them, in their time, in their language/dialect.
I love poetry. My life revolves around poetry. And I was bored a lot reading this book.
Packard is kinda… a dick…
The other aspect of Packard’s writing that I struggled through was his “Kids These Days”-esque judgment, particularly in regards to poetry readings. Slam poetry, perhaps not having as big of an influence on the poetry world at the time of his writing, but he essentially ridicules poets who enjoy stage performance.
For example he wrote, “…[T]he great majority of modern poets preferred the page to the stage; it would be difficult to imagine Emily Dickinson giving a poetry reading, or Charles Baudelaire, or Hart Crane.”
Is Baudelaire who died in 1867 considered a “modern” poet? Was he considered so in 1992?
Throughout his book, he also chastises the idea of “careerism” but doesn’t specify his exact definition of what that means. Should no one take into consideration their career when producing work? That seems very unrealistic if one wants to eat every day and/or have a place to live. Maybe in an ideal world where we don’t live our lives navigating a capitalist hellscape with skyrocketing rents and inflated costs of goods, one could completely not consider how their work might build their career. But then, one could argue that Packard himself had a literary career … so, is there only one correct way of achieving and maintaining a career from poetry? Should no one aim for a career in poetry, but if a career just happens to fall into their lap, then great? If one does write to further their career, does that then make them less-than? Lack integrity? What, William?
He wrote “…[M]ost of the poets out there… their cover letters boast of prestigious grants, cushy academic jobs, numerous publications in trendy mags, all the while they’re raising cute nuclear families and holding onto their secure tenure tracks… Well as the man said, you can’t serve two masters at the same time. You can’t live bunny lives and write tiger poetry, simultaneously. If anyone out there wants to write with originality and honesty and recklessness, then he or she may have to change a lot of things about the life they’re living before they can turn out the kind of poetry that we’d be interested in seeing.”
You heard it here first, folks! Abandon your children and your jobs if you want to be a true *French accent* artiste.
Contrary to this criticism of “careerism,” the lines of thought I am constantly met with in the present literary world are: “Will publishers be able to sell what you’re creating?” “To whom will they sell it?” “Who is your target audience?” “What is your marketing plan?”
That is… if you’re not, like, Chekov (whom Packard sites as an ideal example of not pursuing “careerism”) and you’re not a medical doctor who then also writes great literary works on the side. (Reminds me of all the trial lawyers who dream of writing crime novels, but who don’t actually have the time or energy because they’re too busy making money from a career that brings them no joy or fulfillment.)
If I was supposed to have a different career that then funded my writing so I didn’t fall victim to wanting to strategize a career from my writing, then… whoops! Sounds like that was written by a privileged man who wasn’t also responsible for child bearing/rearing or caretaking for elderly parents or any other responsibility that would make having a full-time career ON TOP OF writing possible.
Notable quotes
All of this being said, what I did enjoy from Packard’s book was the plethora of notable quotes from mostly other writers that are peppered throughout the work. A leave those here:
“Most of the Romantics shared a common view: they believed in a reverence for Nature and a belief that the child was Nature’s priest, who had innocence and primal consciousness unconditioned by civilization. — Packard
“You know now the sorrow of continually doing something that you cannot name, of producing automatically as an apple tree produces apples this thing there is no name for.” — John Ashbery
“I know with the poems that I thought were most private, most unshareable, the ones I would not show, would certainly not print, later when I have shown them, they were the ones that people have gone to.” — Muriel Rukeyser
“Ut pictura, poesis” [As in pictures, so in poems] — Horace
“Every line of poetry can be divided into separate ‘feet’ — the ‘foot’ deriving from the Greek chorus in tragedy, where chorus members would stamp out long and short rhythms with their feet.” — Packard
“The strange word, the metaphor, the ornamental equivalent, etc., will save the language from seeming mean and prosaic, while the ordinary words in it will secure the requisite clearness.” — Aristotle
“Nihil est in intellectus quod non primus in sensus” [Nothing is in the mind that is not first in the senses.] — Aristotle
“The universal exists for, and shines through, the particular.” — Aristotle
“Laborare est orare” [To work is to pray] — Latin proverb
“Without ceasing Practise [sic] nothing can be done. Practise is Art. If you leave off you are lost.” — William Blake
“The most that a good teacher can do is to try and create a climate of approval, a generous spirit of permission, so that his class can experiment and explore and engage in word play for its own sake. A student should be encouraged to feel that any impulse that comes to him is worth developing and elaborating and bringing to a skillful realization.” — Packard
“There are so many self-appointed critics of creativity who are so adept at ridiculing the inept, there is no reason for a teacher of poetry to join in this chorus of scorn” — Packard (hypocritically, he writes this right after writing “The housewife with her sentimental sonnets to the sunrise, the student crusader with his social protest poems, the pompous philosopher with his endless epigrams on existence — these must all be confronted and show the triviality of their ways.” Yuck. Talk about pompous judgment. )
Lastly
and ironically, I enjoyed this quote from Vladimir Nabokov: “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”
I say “ironically” because I will not be rereading Packard’s manual on poetry. It will find a new home in the closest Free Little Library to my apartment.
December 16, 2009
Not unsound. The "History of Poetry" chapter is a good short refresher. In general, this book could be helpful if viewed as a reference book, full of lists: a list of Shakespeare's plays, a list of the six types of consonant sounds (plosives, dentals, sibilants, etc.), a list of the twelve birthstones, and what-have-you.
As for whether I would recommend this book to beginning writers: the best poetry teacher I had in college was nothing like this, and I'm not sure I personally would have taken well to the rather curmudgeonly tone of this book at the tender age of 16 or 17 or 18. Different strokes for different folks, though.
As for whether I would recommend this book to beginning writers: the best poetry teacher I had in college was nothing like this, and I'm not sure I personally would have taken well to the rather curmudgeonly tone of this book at the tender age of 16 or 17 or 18. Different strokes for different folks, though.
November 20, 2017
In many ways the book is a little dates, and Packard wears his contempt for certain trends in 80's Poetry (a general mistrust of the workshop, a legitimate fear of careerism, a gripe with English departments for not teaching the classics...) pretty heavily. But the book is also filled with great quotes, and terrific advice for poets.
August 10, 2017
Founder and editor of The New York Quarterly, a highly regarded national poetry magazine. I was fortunate enough to know Bill. His advice about writing still guides me.
December 11, 2009
I liked this book. Some of the reviews are mixed, but if you want to know more about the basics, then this is a good starting point. Very thorough, lots of examples as well as techniques to try on your own.
December 26, 2008
If you read or write poetry, this is as close as you'll get to having been in one of Packard's legendary classes.
May 9, 2011
Loved it. Will read it over and over as lond as I am alive and still writing poems. Great history, explanation of all forms, and writing exercises.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews