Primer for Poets

A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry guides the young poet toward a deeper understanding of how poetry can function in his or her life, while also introducing the art in an exciting new way. Using such poems as Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" and Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays," the Primer encourages young writers to approach their "thresholds"--those places where disorder meets order, where shaping imagination can turn language into urgent and persuasive poems. It provides the poet with more than a dozen focused writing exercises and explains essential topics such as the personal and cultural threshold; the four forces that animate poetic language (naming, singing, saying, imagining); tactics of revision; ecstasy and engagement as motives for poetry; and how to locate and learn from our personal poetic forebears.

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 02/13/2018
Pages: 336
Weight: 0.6lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.40w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780393253924

About the Author
Orr, Gregory: - Gregory Orr has written twelve poetry collections, a memoir, and several books of criticism, most recently A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry. The recipient of Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.