Introduces the different kinds of poetry and the mechanics of writing poetry, providing an opportunity for the reader to experience the joy of making a poem.

Poet and cartoonist Austin Kleon has discovered a new way to read between the lines. Armed with a daily newspaper and a permanent marker, he constructs through deconstruction—eliminating the words he doesn't need to create a new art form: Newspaper Blackout poetry. Highly original, Kleon's verse ranges from provocative to lighthearted, and from moving to hysterically funny, and undoubtedly entertaining. The latest creations in a long history of "found art," Newspaper Blackout will challenge you to find new meaning in the familiar and inspiration from the mundane. Newspaper Blackout contains original poems by Austin Kleon, as well as submissions from readers of Kleon's popular online blog and a handy appendix on how to create your own blackout poetry.

Poems and commentary by both unknown and famous poets reveal how people from all walks of life have used poem-making to explore matters of concern to us all.

"We need poetry as we need love and company," according to Miller Williams. Making a Poem speaks to us all -- those of us trying to write a first poem, those who have published volumes of poetry, and anyone who cares how the world and language fit together. Distinguished as a poet, a teacher, a scholar, and a publisher, Williams traverses a wealth of topics. He explores poetic techniques of line break, rhythm and meter, and the development of verse forms. In our technological age, he makes clear that poetry is essential to the human soul, showing the connection between scientists and humanists. Williams draws from experience to describe the importance of teaching poetry to prisoners, the value of the university and the small press in fostering poetry, and the relationship between writer and editor. Making a Poem is an intimate, conversational treatise on poetry by a man of letters with decades of practice in both the business and the craft of verse. Readers will take away from this delightful book a deeper appreciation of the poet's art and the vital role poetry can play in their everyday lives.

From the winner of the Bollingen Prize in poetry and author of the classic bestseller "Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?" comes a unique, highly entertaining book for anyone who wants to be a better reader and writer of poetry.

Over sixty years after his death, Wallace Stevens remains one of the major figures of American modernist poetry, celebrated for his masterful style, formal rigor, and aesthetic investigations of the natural, political, and metaphysical worlds. In Making the Poem, noted Stevens scholar George S. Lensing explores the poet’s progress in the creation of his body of work, considering its development, composition, and reception. Drawing on little-known sources and nuanced readings of Stevens’ texts, Lensing expands the customary view of the poet’s creative approaches. This wide-ranging study extends from the origins and overlapping themes of well-known poems through the social and political backgrounds that marked Stevens’ work to the prosodic and musical elements central to his style. Making the Poem features a dynamic new reading of the important early poem “Sea Surface Full of Clouds”—viewing it alongside his wife Elsie’s journal describing the sea voyage that inspired the poem—and an extensive, multiperspective treatment of the widely anthologized “The Idea of Order at Key West,” as well as a careful excavation of the poem “Mozart, 1935” in the context of the U.S. Great Depression. Lensing concludes with a discussion of the gradual (and sometimes reluctant) recognition Stevens’ work received from poets and critics in Great Britain and Ireland. Stemming from decades of research and writing, Making the Poem: Stevens’ Approaches presents a holistic view of his creative achievements and a wealth of new material for readers to draw upon in their future encounters with the poetry of Wallace Stevens.

In praise of the greatest job in the world... The right book at the right time: an impassioned defense of teachers and why we need them now more than ever. Teacher turned teacher’s advocate Taylor Mali inspired millions with his original poem “What Teachers Make,” a passionate and unforgettable response to a rich man at a dinner party who sneeringly asked him what teachers make. Mali’s sharp, funny, perceptive look at life in the classroom pays tribute to the joys of teaching…and explains why teachers are so vital to our society. What Teachers Make is a book that will be treasured and shared by every teacher in America—and everybody who’s ever loved or learned from one.

A comprehensive guide to writing or reading poetry, by “one of our most lucid and important critics” (American Academy of Arts and Letters). Why does a great lyric poem ask to be reread, even after we know it by heart? In How Poems Get Made, acclaimed poet and critic James Longenbach answers this question by discussing a wide range of exemplary poems, from Shakespeare through Blake, Dickinson, and Moore, to a variety of poets making poems today. In each chapter of How Poems Get Made, Longenbach examines a specific aspect of the poetic medium—including Diction, Syntax, Rhythm, Echo, Figure, and Tone—and shows how a poet may manipulate these most basic elements to bring a poem to life.

When Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis was first published, it catapulted its author into the bestseller lists and established her as one of our funniest and most eloquent poets. There are so many kinds of awful men - One can't avoid them all. She often said She'd never make the same mistake again: She always made a new mistake instead. (from 'Rondeau Redoublé')