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| What Is Poetry and How Do I Write It? | |
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| What Is Poetry and How Do I Begin to Write? | |
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| Where Does Poetry Come From? | |
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| How Does Poetry Function? | |
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| How a Poem Functions | |
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| Reading and Writing | |
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| What Is a Poet? | |
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| Do You Have to Have Talent to Write Poetry? | |
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| Why Write Poems? | |
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| Uses for a Poem | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Exposing Poetry's Bones: What Poetry Is Made Of | |
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| Rivets and Beams | |
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| Imagery | |
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| Metaphor | |
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| Repetition | |
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| Music | |
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| Language | |
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| Line | |
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| Stanza | |
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| Nuts 'n' Bolts | |
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| Speaker | |
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| Symbol | |
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| Irony | |
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| Hyperbole and Understatement | |
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| Allusion | |
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| Content (What Are You Going to Write About?) | |
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| Basic Types of Poems | |
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| Formal Poetry | |
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| Free Verse | |
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| Performance Poetry | |
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| How Do I Put All These Things Together? | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Getting Started (and Over the Fear of Starting!): The Poetic Process | |
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| The Poet's Toolbox | |
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| Writing Utensils | |
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| Write On! | |
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| A Room of One's Own | |
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| Other Essentials | |
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| The Blank Page | |
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| Waiting for the Muse | |
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| Reading for Inspiration | |
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| Freeing Yourself of the Ordinary | |
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| A Note on Practice | |
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| Great Openings | |
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| Closure | |
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| How to Know If What You Are Writing Is "Good" | |
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| The Five Senses | |
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| Have You Said What You Wanted to Say? | |
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| Words, Words, Words | |
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| Show Your Writing to Someone Else | |
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| Exercises | |
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| All Your Words Fit to Print (and Some That Aren't!): Keeping Journals | |
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| What Is Journaling? | |
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| The Importance of Journaling | |
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| The Difference Between a Journal and a Diary | |
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| When to Write in Your Journal | |
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| Types of Journals | |
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| The Short Course in Journaling | |
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| Extracting Poems from Your Journals | |
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| A Poem a Day | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Opening the Stanza's Door: Entering Poetry | |
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| Painting with Words: Imagery | |
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| No Ideas but in Things | |
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| Show, Don't Tell | |
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| Literal and Figurative Images | |
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| Abstract vs. Concrete | |
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| The Five Senses | |
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| Visual Imagery | |
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| Auditory Imagery | |
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| Tactile Imagery | |
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| Olfactory Imagery | |
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| Taste Imagery | |
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| Synesthesia | |
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| Painting with Words: How to Create an Image | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Metaphorically Speaking | |
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| Metaphor | |
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| Tenor and Vehicle | |
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| Simile | |
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| Metonymy and Synecdoche | |
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| Personification | |
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| Conceit | |
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| When Good Metaphors Go Bad: Mixed Metaphor | |
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| How to Create a Metaphor | |
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| Exercises for the Metaphorically Impaired | |
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| Repetition, Repetition, Repetition | |
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| Repeating Words | |
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| Repeating Phrases and Refrains | |
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| Beginning and Ending Repetition | |
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| Anaphora | |
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| Image and Symbol Repetition | |
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| Syntactical Repetition | |
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| Metrical Repetition | |
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| Sonic Repetition | |
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| Exercises | |
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| The Sound of Music | |
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| The Music of Poetry | |
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| Rhyme | |
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| Straight Rhyme | |
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| Slant Rhyme | |
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| Internal Rhyme | |
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| Identical Rhyme | |
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| Other Types of Rhyme | |
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| Rhyme Scheme | |
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| Alliteration, Assonance, and Consonance | |
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| Onomatopoeia | |
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| Euphony and Cacophony | |
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| Tone, Voice, and Diction | |
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| Meter | |
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| Exercises | |
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| You've Got Rhythm: Metrical Poetry | |
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| Why Poets Use Meter | |
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| What Is Meter? | |
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| The Short Course in Counting: Scansion | |
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| Metrical Variation | |
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| Blank Verse | |
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| Sprung Rhythm | |
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| Accentual and Syllabic Meter | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Popular Types of Poems and How to Write Them | |
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| Tell Me a Story: Narrative Poetry | |
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| Cause and Effect | |
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| Who's the Speaker? | |
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| Point of View | |
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| First Person: The "I" | |
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| Second Person: The "You" | |
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| Third Person: "He" and "She" and "It" | |
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| The Collective: "We" | |
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| Dialogue | |
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| The Ballad | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Love and the Great Beyond | |
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| Wooing 101: Love Poems | |
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| Desire | |
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| Writing the Erotic | |
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| Death and Grieving | |
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| Exercises | |
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| The Three Faces of Eve: Persona Poems and Letter Poems | |
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| Persona Poems | |
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| The Dramatic Monologue | |
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| The Epistle Poem | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Spellbinding!: List Poems and Rituals | |
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| Starting with a List | |
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| Rituals | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Some Fun Fixed Forms | |
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| Sonnets | |
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| The Volta | |
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| Variations in and on the Sonnet | |
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| Villanelle | |
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| Sestina | |
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| Canzone | |
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| Pantoum | |
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| Ghazal | |
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| Haiku and Tanka | |
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| Poems to Dance By | |
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| Triolet | |
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| Exercises | |
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| More Fun Forms | |
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| Acrostic | |
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| Ars Poetica | |
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| Aubade | |
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| Cento | |
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| Concrete Poetry and Calligrams | |
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| Found Poems | |
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| Light Verse | |
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| Ode | |
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| Pastoral | |
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| Prose Poem | |
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| Other Fun Forms to Try | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Poetry and Practicality | |
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| Cursed Be He Who Stirs My Bones!: Avoiding Poetry Pitfalls | |
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| Using Poetic Conventions | |
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| Language Problems | |
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| Cliches | |
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| Obvious and Familiar Language | |
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| Adverbs | |
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| Adjectives | |
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| The Verb "To Be" | |
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| Lack of Focus | |
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| The "Little" Words | |
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| Noun-of-Noun Construction | |
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| Overwriting | |
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| Punctuation Problems | |
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| Grammar in a Poem? | |
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| Telling, Not Showing | |
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| Musical Matters | |
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| Wretched Rhyme | |
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| Monotonous Meter and Rotten Repetition | |
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| Subject Matter Matters | |
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| Melodrama and Sentimentality | |
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| Sermonizing | |
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| The "Guess What It Is" Poem | |
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| Too Much, Too Little, Too Late | |
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| Exercises | |
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| How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?: Revision, Revision, Revision | |
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| Revise Away! | |
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| Murdering Your Darlings | |
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| Why Revise? | |
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| What About Inspiration? | |
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| Letting a Poem "Rest" | |
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| When Good Poems Go Bad: The Quick Fix | |
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| Enough Is Just Enough | |
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| What Does Your Poem Want to Be When It Grows Up? | |
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| The Theory That You'll Keep Getting Better | |
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| The Death of a Poem | |
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| The Benefit of Moving On | |
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| A Sample Revision | |
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| Exercises | |
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| To Slam or Not To Slam?: Reading Your Poetry in Public | |
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| Why Should I Read Poetry in Public? | |
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| Where to Read | |
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| What to Expect at a Reading | |
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| Audience Etiquette | |
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| Reader Etiquette | |
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| Slamming and the Spoken Word | |
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| What Is Spoken Word? | |
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| How a Slam Works | |
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| Writing for Listeners | |
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| Starting a Reading Series or a Slam | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Writing in a Vacuum: Workshops, Colonies, Conferences | |
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| What Is a Poetry "Workshop"? | |
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| Critique | |
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| How a Workshop Works | |
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| Become an Active Critic in Your Workshop | |
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| Workshop Etiquette | |
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| Workshop Pitfalls | |
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| Workshops and Other Poetry Forums on the WWW | |
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| Starting a Workshop | |
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| Finding Mr. or Mrs. Critic "Right" | |
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| Writers' Conferences | |
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| Writers' Colonies | |
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| The Creative Writing Degree | |
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| Types of Writing Programs | |
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| The Top Writing Programs in the United States | |
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| Choosing a Writing Program | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Your Name in Print: Getting Published | |
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| Why Do You Want to Be Published? | |
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| How to Get Your Poems Published | |
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| Where to Send Your Poems | |
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| When to Send Your Poems | |
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| How to Send Your Poems | |
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| Submission No-Nos | |
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| Simultaneous Submissions | |
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| Paying for Publication | |
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| Organizing Your Submissions | |
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| An Insider Look at the Acceptance/Rejection Process | |
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| Rejection ... and More Rejection | |
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| Stages of Rejection | |
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| The Big Day: Publication! | |
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| Contests | |
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| A First Book | |
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| Chapbooks | |
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| Self-Publishing | |
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| What a Tangled Web We Weave | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Pen Out of Ink?: Beating Writer's Block | |
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| I Gotta Use Words When I Talk to You: From Diann Blakely | |
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| A Rose Is Not a Rosa: From Richard Blanco | |
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| About the Author: From Catherine Bowman | |
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| The Swing Shift Blues: From Richard Cecil | |
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| Obsessive Definitions: From Denise Duhamel | |
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| The Day the Pleasure Factory Broke Down: From Stephen Dunn | |
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| Clustering: From Lola Haskins | |
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| Poetic Dialogue: From Dean Kostos | |
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| The Best and the Worst: From David Lehman | |
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| What's in a Name?: From Lyn Lifshin | |
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| Graphing Your Life: From Campbell McGrath | |
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| Not This, Not This, ... but That: From David Rivard | |
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| Detail Scavenger Hunt: From Maureen Seaton | |
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| Two Exercises: From Reginald Shepherd | |
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| Bedroom Catalogue: From Maura Stanton | |
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| One Exercise: From Charles Harper Webb | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Poetry Appreciation 101 | |
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| Appreciating a Poem | |
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| Follow the Pack: Finding Good Poems | |
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| "Feeling" a Poem | |
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| The Skills I Use, the Skills They Use | |
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| Poetry Interpretation | |
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| Lost in Language | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Writing Poetry FAQs: Most Frequently Asked Questions | |
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| What Is Poetic License? | |
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| Why Does Poetry Have So Many Rules? | |
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| Do I Have to Capitalize the Beginning Word of Each Line in My Poem? | |
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| Why Do Some Poets Shorten Words, as in O'ercast, E'er, 'Mong, 'Twould, 'Twas, Etc.--You Get the Point | |
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| Someone Told Me I Shouldn't Use Thee, Thy, Dost, and Other Words Like Them. Why Not? | |
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| Where Should I Break My Lines? Can't I Just Break Them Anywhere I Want? | |
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| What Do I Do If a Line in My Poem Is Too Long and Runs Over onto the Next Line? | |
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| How Do I Title My Poems? | |
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| Do I Have to Use Stanzas in My Poems? | |
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| I Had an Idea for a Poem but Then I Found Out That Someone Else Wrote One with the Same Subject Matter. Can I Still Write It? | |
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| What Does It Mean When a Poet Writes a Poem After Another Poet? | |
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| I'm a Free Spirit and I Just Want to Express My Feelings, So Why Do I Have to Know Anything About Meter or Form? Aren't Those Things Passe Anyway? | |
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| I Want to Try Writing Some Fixed Forms. Do I Have to Adhere Strictly to the Form, or Can I Play Around with It a Bit? If I Do, Is It Still a Formal Poem? | |
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| Does Anyone Still Take Rhyme Seriously? | |
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| Can I Use Modern-Sounding Details (Cell Phone, Coke Can, E-Mail) in a Poem and Still Have It Be Considered a Serious Poem? | |
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| I Feel Very Misunderstood by My Workshop. They Just Don't "Get" What I'm Trying to Do. Should I Try to Find a New Workshop or Quit Trying the "Group Thing" Altogether? | |
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| Isn't Poetry Just About Creating Something Beautiful? Making Beauty out of the Language? | |
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| Do I Have to Copyright My Poems? | |
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| How Do I Get a Book of Poems Published? | |
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| If I Keep Writing Poetry, Will I Be "Discovered"? | |
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| I've Never Shown My Poems to Anyone Else Before and I'm Afraid To--but I Want Some Feedback--What Should I Do? | |
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| Appendixes | |
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| Glossary of Poetic Terms | |
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| Resources | |
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| Index | |