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I have quite a few books on reading and writing poetry. I will share a list of them here. I hope others will also tell about the books they have found useful. Here I am with my Poetry for Dummies book ... ...and below is the list of books in my collection. They are all in English, and I will provide a rating for the degree of language difficulty for each book. If anyone has any questions about any of these books, please reply in this topic, or send me a pm. I will add to the list as I have time, and as my collection grows -- ****** Poetry for Dummies by John Timpane, Ph.D. with Maureen Watts. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 2001. -------An excellent reference book written in easy-to-understand language. All aspects of poetry are discussed, and tips on writing are provided, along with some exercises. This is the only book from the Dummies series that I have, but from what I hear, they are all excellent. [(309 pages) Laguage: easy.] A Poet's Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; 1999. -------A scholarly and exhaustive reference book. Contains a complete glossary. [(561 pages) Language: moderate to difficult.] A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver. New York: Harcourt, Inc.; 1994. -------An excellent primer, written by a very popular poet. [(130 pages) Language: easy to moderate]. How to Read a Poem by Burton Raffel. New York: The New American Library; 1984. -------I've had this book for over twenty years. It's an excellent comprehensive reference source by a poet who is also a professor and translator. If I could only have one general book on poetry out all of them, I would choose this one. In addition to the fantastic information on poetry, it contains a wonderful selection of poems, including many of the ones I shared back on the old site by authors such as James Wright, Charles Simic, and Denise Levertov. This one's still available, too; I saw it recently at Barnes & Noble. I think I'll buy myself a new copy, because mine has become tattered over the years ... [(260 pages) Language: moderate] Creating Poetry by John Drury. Cincinnati: F&W Publications, Inc.; 1991. -------This one's on writing poetry. It's loaded with tips and exercises. [(211 pages) Language: moderate] The Art and Craft of Poetry by Michael Bugeja. Cincinnati: F&W Publications, Inc.; 1994. -------Another wonderful book on writing poetry. Also loaded with tips and exercises. [(339 pages) Language: moderate] How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch. New York: Harcourt, Inc.; 1999. -------General, on poetry. [(354 pages) Language: moderate] The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press; 2005. -------The cover bears an inscription that reads, "Practical Advice for Beginning Poets." Written by a former Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (USA). [(163 pages) Language: moderate] All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing -- an Explanation of Meter and Versification by Timothy Steele. Athens: Ohio University Press; 1999. -------Metrics. [(366 pages) Language: moderate] ****** I have more books on poetry, too, but they are the old school textbook types. It's unlikely that they can be readily obtained from anywhere. Tony

* Reading is the cognitive process of deriving meaning from written or printed text. It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Effective readers use decoding skills (to translate printed text into the sounds of language), use morpheme, semantics, syntax and context cues to identify the meaning of unknown words, activate prior knowledge (schemata theory), use comprehension, and demonstrate fluency during reading. Although reading print text is now an important way for the general population to access information, this has not always been the case. With some exceptions, only a small percentage of the population in many countries were considered literate before the Industrial Revolution. * passage form wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_ _____________________ I love to read. Sometimes I read more and sometimes less. Now because of the conditions what I have with my computer, I read more on-line, and that is what I don't like. But also because of my education I need to read from some old books where the text is " deadly " but I love when I read these subjects. For now I read some stuffs from Phylosophy of the Low, but also I read poetry too. I have poetry book by James Wright sent by Tony ( Tony dear, thank you for the books ) and also the best 100 love sonnets by Neruda , - lovely books. So it is good to read I want here to share what we read and are we read . And sure we can share some good titles and suggestions for some good and worth book and our thoughts about book in common. Thank you for reading and I hope we will have good start here again, and we all together can make again new good poetry site. Aleksandra

I recently contacted an expert on meter at a well-known internet poetry workshop with a few questions that I had. He answered my questions and recommended that I get a book which is unquestionably the best work on the subject of meter available today. In other words, it's a contemporary standard. The book is by Timothy Steele, a professor of English at California State University in Los Angeles, and it's called "All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing -- an Explanation of Meter and Versification." (Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio, 1999) None of my local Borders or Barnes and Noble stores had the book in stock, but I did it order it through one of them (B&N), and my copy came yesterday. The book really is a fantastic treatise on the subject. It's 366 pages long, written in clear English that's easy to understand and not highfalutin. One of the questions I presented to the moderator at the workshop site concerned the scansion of line two in Philip Larkin's poem FRIDAY NIGHT IN THE ROYAL STATION HOTEL: Clusters of lights over empty chairs ... which I scanned as follows: CLUSters / of LIGHTS / ^O / ver EMP / ty CHAIRS / / trochee / iamb / headless iamb ?!? / iamb / iamb / My question went to the the third foot in the line. I knew that, generally, headless iambs can only occur at the beginnings of lines of iambic pentameter. Yet, if that was the case, then what was the peculiarity that appears in the Larkin line above? The question is answered in the book. Steele discusses the convention, starting on page 84, in a section called "6. Other variants: Divided Lines, Clipped Lines, Broken-Backed Lines, and Feminine Caesuras." Although Steele does not scan the line above, it appears that the omission of an unstressed syllable in that line does not amount to a headless iamb in the middle of the line. Rather, it's an example of a "broken-backed line." On the broken-backed line, Steele writes (on page 85) that, "Another Middle English variant is the unhappily named 'broken-backed' pentameter. Broken-backed pentameters lack a metrically unaccented syllable in the middle of the line. Generally, the missing syllable is the fifth (i.e., the line's third offbeat)." This is exactly the case in the Larkin line above! On page 87, Steele even states that Larkin uses this convention of the broken-backed line often and goes on to provide two more Larkin lines as examples. They are: /aNO / ther CHURCH / ^MAT / ting SEATS / and STONES / and i FELL / aSLEEP / ^WAK / ing AT / the FUMES / I look forward to learning much more from this book. I recommend it highly to anyone who wants to understand meter. Tony

Explore the Craft of Writing Poetry Internet sites I found informative: Bob's ByWay Bob Nueman's Vol Central BayMoon Shadow Poetry Literary Link Poetry Base Gymart Poet's Collective Poet's Garret Norton Anthology of Poetry Poety Kaleidoscope Instant Poetry Forms for Kids World of Poets Wikipedia I do use this site but, as a side note, I have had occasion to go to Wikipedia and find the definition of a couple of poetic terms or genres is a copy & paste from something I wrote here in the reference section. In some cases there is a tiny link at the bottom of the page that leads the reader back to this site but it doesn't state who wrote it. (Which was me.) That makes me a little nervous about how the information on Wikipedia is gathered because I did not contribute any of my articles to Wikipedia. I have also found word for word descriptions of poetic genres or terms that have been copied from the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics without naming the source at all. (No I don't have a photogenic memory but when researching a poetic term on line I usually have the NPEoPP open to that term and probably some other book or two...while searching. I try to find at least 3 sources to help me confirm and develop what I write here. Bibliography An Introduction to Welsh Poetry, Gwyn Williams 1952 Philadelphia Dufour Editions (in depth study of Welsh "meter" by one who can translate the original poems into English for better understanding) Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry, by Tony Barnstone and Chou Pin, 2005, Anchor Books.(love this book with a rich understanding of Chinese form but especially for the beautiful poetry it contains) Ballades and Rondeaus, by Gleeson White, 1888, New York, D Appleton and Co. Book of Forms by Lewis Turco 2000, University Press of New England ISBN: I-58465-041-9(a popular book of forms used widely by internet poets) Complete Rhyming Dictionary, by Clement Wood, 1991 Doubleday (good descriptions of the most popular verse forms are found in the introduction of this Dictionary) Early Celtic Versecraft, origin development diffusion, by James Travis, 1973 Cornell University Press A Grammar of the Irish Language, by John ODonovan 1845, Dublin:Hodges and Smith, Grafton Street. Haiku Handbook, William Higginson, 1985 First Kodansha International Publishing ISBN: 4-7700-1430-9 How to Haiku, Bruce Ross 2002, Tuttle Publishing ISBN:0-8048-3232-3 (clarity and efficiency contained herein) Lyric Forms From France: Their History and Their Use, by Helen Louise Cohen, 1923, Harcourt Brace and Co, New York Making of a Poem, A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland; 2000, WW Norton (good introduction of the dominant verse forms in English with lots of example poems) New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics edited by Preminger and Brogan 1993 Princeton University Press. ISBN: 0-691-02123-6 (historical evolution detailed) Pathways For the Poet by Viola Jacobson Berg, 1977 Mott Media ISBN 0-915134-18-7(includes many little known invented forms which appear to be used by teachers to help teach various poetic terms in action) Patterns of Poetry by Miller Williams, 1986, Louisiana State University Press Poetic Form, An Introduction, by David Caplan, 2007, Pearson Education Inc Poetry Dictionary, 2nd Edition, by John Drury, 2006, Writer' Digest Books ISBN:I -58297-329-6 Poet's Guide to Poetry, Mary Kinzie, 1999 University of Chicago Press Prosody Handbook, A Guide to Poetic Form, by Robert Beum and Karl Shapiro, 2006 Dover Edition, Library of Congress Prosody in England and Elsewhere, by Leonardo Malcovati, 2005 Gival Press Arlington VA. Rhyme's Reason, John Hollander, 2001 Library of Congress (fun to read, form described in verse, good for example but not necessarily for clarity of structure.) Shapes of our Singing by Robin Skelton, 2002 Library of Congress ISBN:0-910055-76-9(excellent descriptions of structure and a wide variety of verse forms of the world.) Singing in Chains by Mererid Hopwood, 2004 Gomer Press, Wales (more detail on ancient Welsh Poetry) The Ode Less Travelled, Unlocking the Poet Within, by Stephen Fry, 2005, Gotham Books (An entertaining as well as informative book on the intricacies of writing all types of poetry.) The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Terms, Edited by Ron Padgett, 2000, T&W Books, NY ISBN: 0-915924-60-9(Although not all verse forms are included, this provides a comprehensive description with examples of many common forms as well as some not so common.) Since an understanding of all components of poetics is essential in the study of form, the following books have been very helpful even though their primary focus is not verse forms: A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver, 1994, A Harvest Original, Harcourt Inc (a must have) An Introduction to Poetry by X J kennedy and Dana Gioia, 2002. Longman ISBN: 0-321-08764-x(a rich, current exploration of poetry and its components) Art and Craft of Poetry, by Michael Bugeja, 2001, Writer's Digest Books ISBN:1-58297-101-3 Creating Poetry, by John Drury, 1991, Writer's Digest Books Dawn to the West, by Donald Keene, 1999 Volume 4, Cambridge University Press (In depth history of Japanese literature) Discovery of Poetry by Frances Mayes, 2001, A Harvest Original Harper Colllins Study Bible, edited by Wayne A. Meeks, 1993 HarperCollins Publishers (includes footnotes on the styles and beliefs connected to Hebrew writing) In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit, 1995, Tilbury House Publishers (challenging excersises included) Modern Chinese Poetry, Theory and Practice since 1917, by Michelle Ye, 1991,Yale University Press Norton Anthology of World Literature Volumes A – F, editor Peter J. Simon, 2002, WW Norton and Co Inc. (evolution of verse from the very beginning through the 20th century) Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio & Dorianne Laux Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. 1988.•ISBN-13: 9780393316544 Riverside Shakespeare, Edited by Dean Johnson et al, 1997, Houghton Mifflin Company (everything you didn't know about Shakespeare, with a complete collection of his plays and poetry.) Rules for the Dance, by Mary Oliver 1998, A Mariner Original (excellent book on meter) Seeds in the Heart, A History of Japanese Literature Volume I, by Donald Keene, 1999, Cambridge University Press (detailed study of the evolution of Japanese literature) The Poet's Handbook by Judson Jerome 1980, Writer's Digest Books (understanding meter and more) To Read a Poem by Donald Hall, 1992, Heinle and Heinle ISBN: 0-03-055539 (great introduction to the enjoyment and the understanding of poetry.) Unbroken Line by Miriam Sagan, 1999, Sherman Asher Publishing Western Wind by John Frederick Nims, David Mason , 2000 Mc Graw-Hill Some of these books are out of print, some are textbooks, many were purchased used but in excellent condition, all were found available for purchase on-line within the last 6 years. Feb - 2008