Clive James is one of our finest critics and best-loved cultural voices. He is also a prize-winning poet. Since he was first enthralled by the mysterious power of poetry, he has been a dedicated student. In fact, for Clive, poetry has been nothing less than the occupation of a lifetime, and in this book he presents a distillation of all he's learned about the art form that matters to him most. With his customary wit, delightfully lucid prose style and wide-ranging knowledge, Clive explains the difference between the innocuous stuff that often passes for poetry today and a real poem: the latter being a work of unity that insists on being heard entire and threatens never to leave the memory. A committed formalist and an astute commentator, Clive offers close and careful readings of individual poems and poets (from Shakespeare to Larkin, Keats to Pound), and in some case second readings or re-readings late in life - just to be sure he wasn't wrong the first time! Whether discussing technical details of metaphorical creativity or simply praising his five favourite collections of all time, he is never less than captivating. Filled with insight and written with an honest, infectious enthusiasm, Poetry Notebook is the product of over fifty years of writing, reading, translating and thinking about poetry.

Presents excerpts from the working notebooks of twenty-six American poets, including Marvin Bell, Donald Hall, Heather McHugh, and Charles Simic

Why do we need new art? How free is the artist in making? And why is the artist, and particularly the poet, a figure of freedom in Western culture? The MacArthur Award–winning poet and critic Susan Stewart ponders these questions in The Poet’s Freedom. Through a series of evocative essays, she not only argues that freedom is necessary to making and is itself something made, but also shows how artists give rules to their practices and model a self-determination that might serve in other spheres of work. Stewart traces the ideas of freedom and making through insightful readings of an array of Western philosophers and poets—Plato, Homer, Marx, Heidegger, Arendt, Dante, and Coleridge are among her key sources. She begins by considering the theme of making in the Hebrew Scriptures, examining their accountof a god who creates the world and leaves humans free to rearrange and reform the materials of nature. She goes on to follow the force of moods, sounds, rhythms, images, metrical rules, rhetorical traditions, the traps of the passions, and the nature of language in the cycle of making and remaking. Throughout the book she weaves the insight that the freedom to reverse any act of artistic making is as essential as the freedom to create. A book about the pleasures of making and thinking as means of life, The Poet’s Freedom explores and celebrates the freedom of artists who, working under finite conditions, make considered choices and shape surprising consequences. This engaging and beautifully written notebook on making will attract anyone interested in the creation of art and literature.

Elegantly repackaged, The Morning Pages Journal is one of The Artist's Way's most effective tools for cultivating creativity, personal growth, and change. Now more compact and featuring spiral binding to make for easier use, these Morning Pages invite you to do three pages daily of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness, which provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize, and synchronize the day at hand. This daily writing, coupled with the twelve-week program outlined in The Artist's Way, will help you discover and recover your personal creativity, artistic confidence, and productivity. The Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal includes an introduction by Julia Cameron, complete instructions on how to use the Morning Pages and benefit fully from their daily use, and inspiring quotations that will guide you through the process.

Personal reflections on the vital role of the notebook in creative writing, from Dorianne Laux, Sue Grafton, John Dufresne, Kyoko Mori, and more. This collection of essays by established professional writers explores how their notebooks serve as their studios and workshops—places to collect, to play, and to make new discoveries with language, passions, and curiosities. For these diverse writers, the journal also serves as an ideal forum to develop their writing voice, whether crafting fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Some include sample journal entries that have since developed into published pieces. Through their individual approaches to keeping a notebook, the contributors offer valuable advice, personal recollections, and a hearty endorsement of the value of using notebooks to document, develop, and nurture a writer’s creative spark.

Walt Whitman is widely regarded as one of the masters of American poetry. Here are collected his finest poems, a perfect companion for any fan of Whitman's work.

The Writer's Notebook offers aspiring authors the most enlightening and engaging seminars and essays from some of Tin House's favorite writers. Jim Shepard, Aimee Bender, Steve Almond, Antonya Nelson and others break down specific elements of craft and share insights into the joys and pains of their own writing.

Anyone who has seen and laughed with Willis the Poet will know that his poetry notebooks contain poems big and small, incidental and even more incidental, rough and smooth and everything in between (incl smoothly rough). The thing they have in common is that they are all hilarious. At least the ones he reads out are. But never before has Willis the Poet permitted his audience to peep inside his most prized poetry trove. A bad idea? Perhaps, but there's no resisting a top secret poetry notebook!

From Simon & Schuster, in its ninth year, The Best American Poetry 1996 is universally acclaimed as the best anthology in the field. The compilation includes a diverse abundance of poems published in 1995 in more than 40 publications ranging from The New Yorker to The Paris Review to Bamboo Ridge.

An ant to the stars or stars to the ant—which is more irrelevant? Weekend Jet Skiers— rude to call them idiots, yes, but facts are facts. Clamor of seabirds as the sun falls—I look up and ten years have passed." —from "Dawn Notebook" Such is the expansive terrain of Seven Notebooks: the world as it is seen, known, imagined, and dreamed; our lives as they are felt, thought, desired, and lived. Written in forms that range from haiku to prose, and in a voice that veers from incanta­tory to deadpan, these seven poetic sequences offer diverse reflections on language and poetry, time and consciousness, civilization and art—to say nothing of bureaucrats, surfboards, and blue margaritas. Taken collectively, Seven Notebooks composes a season-by-season account of a year in the life of its narrator, from spring in Chicago to summer at the Jersey Shore to winter in Miami Beach. Not a novel in verse, not a poetic journal, but a lyric chronicle, this utterly unique book reclaims territory long abandoned by American poetry, a characteristic ambition of Campbell McGrath, one of the most honored, accessible, and humanistically engaged writers of our time.