Poetry Books

Letters to a Young Poet

Rainer Maria Rilke

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 71 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This book is fantastic! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This little book though short in lenght packs a condensed form of life wisdom. Some of the insight Rilke writes to his friend are priceless. Rilke penetrates to the essence of a wide range issues from religious to material never preaching but more like asking his friend to truly examine his decisions in life and let no one else make his choices for him. This has to be one of my all time favorite books and it is a quick read as well.

Editorial Review:

These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of the 20th century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touches upon subjects that will interest writers, artists, and thinkers. Letters to a Young Poet is a classic that should be read by everyone who dreams of expressing themselves creatively. This luminous translation offers inspiration to all people who seek to know and express their inner truth. This edition features a new foreword by Kent Nerburn, author of Small Graces and Letters to My Son.

2009 Poet's Market

Editors of Writers Digest Books

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Editorial Review:

2009 Poet's Market gives readers all the information necessary to research markets and submit poetry for publication. In addition to market listings, poets will find guidance for preparing and submitting manuscripts, identifying markets, relating to editors, and more. Plus, the book includes additional listings for conferences, workshops, organizations for poets, print and online resources, and the latest trends in poetry writing and publishing.

Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama

Robert DiYanni

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Oops 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book instead of buying the 2nd edition. I figured it would be exactly the same. It isn't. It has a lot of the same stories but some are missing, like "The Lottery." Luckily it's a book of short stories, so the stories that are missing you can get online. The price is worth the work. It's half the price of the new book. A paper back book is not worth 58 dollars. Buy this look up the other stories.

Plus it's easy to navigate.

Editorial Review:

This anthology offers a lively introduction to the study of fiction, poetry, and drama, and is appropriate for introduction to literature courses as well as literature-based composition courses.

Known for its clear presentation of the formal elements of literary analysis, DiYanni's Literature effectively balances classical, modern, and contemporary works across the three major genres, blending well-known writers with a diverse gathering of newer, international figures. This literary breadth is supplemented by extensive coverage of writing about literature, making DiYanni an excellent resource for literature instructors who want a full-featured anthology.

Legal Writing in Plain English: A Text with Exercises (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

Bryan A. Garner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Admirably clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful-unfortunately, these adjectives rarely describe legal writing, whether in the form of briefs, opinions, contracts, or statutes. In Legal Writing in Plain English, Bryan A. Garner provides lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The book encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. In essence, it teaches straight thinking—a skill inseparable from good writing.

Replete with common sense and wit, the book draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through more than a decade of teaching in the field. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting. Meanwhile, Garner explores important aspects of document design. Basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section reinforce the book's principles. (An answer key to basic exercises is included in the book; answers to intermediate and advanced exercises are provided in a separate Instructor's Manual, free of charge to instructors.) Appendixes include a comprehensive punctuation guide with advice and examples, and four model documents.

Today more than ever before, legal professionals cannot afford to ignore the trend toward clear language shorn of jargon. Clients demand it, and courts reward it. Despite the age-old tradition of poor writing in law, Legal Writing in Plain English shows how legal writers can unshackle themselves.

Legal Writing in Plain English includes:

*Tips on generating thoughts, organizing them, and creating outlines.
*Sound advice on expressing your ideas clearly and powerfully.
*Dozens of real-life writing examples to illustrate writing problems and solutions.
*Exercises to reinforce principles of good writing (also available on the Internet).
*Helpful guidance on page layout.
*A punctuation guide that shows the correct uses of every punctuation mark.
*Model legal documents that demonstrate the power of plain English.

A Poetry Handbook

Mary Oliver

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Just what it says it is 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Mary Oliver's book about writing poetry is very like her poetry, unsurprisingly. It is brief, evocative, latent with implications and wit. It seemed to be addressed to people who attend poetry workshops and some points seemed to have derived from that type of experience, and the type of poem that: "it really doesn't matter whether you read it or not." She makes the point that good poetry requires solitude for its gestation, and I don't think it's too great besmirchment of educational ideals to say that great poets are born not made, after all people don't seem able to "learn" spiritual intuition. Some people do however begin to ring inside when the subject matter of spiritual intuition comes up, as in her poetry, and this book about technique manages to stir you within. It's also entertaining.
But I think if she hadn't been addressing poetry workshop attendees, she might have taken up the very dangerous topic of subject matter. She, like the great Haiku artists, always writes about aspects of the reality we can sense: see, hear, touch, remember seeing. etc. and these experiences lead to deeper reflections of the deeper Reality. Her poems take us to the place where the higher world and (our) lower world overlap, which, though it's everywhere, isn't that easy to find.
I think the real necessity in learning to be a poet or artist of any kind is in the learning to live, in becoming permeable to the great invisibility. This is much more difficult than is generally thought and, possibly, a subject of great interest, since it entails a study of everything you do and are. Anyway, she avoided this aspect of poetry for the moment and wrote this perfectly fine, insightful examination modern poetic virtues and sensibilities.

Editorial Review:

With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poet Mary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter and rhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems from Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts an extraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space. “Stunning” (Los Angeles Times). Index.

Literature (An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, And Drama -portable, Parts 1-4)

Dana Gioia

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Surprsingly Wonderful! 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I picked this book up for a class, expecting to be perfectly bored. Instead, this book woke up my sleeping love of learning and literature. The book is easy to understand and contains MANY great stories and poems in it. It also has a great glossary and index was well. It came with an additional feature, MyLiteratureLab, which is an accompanying web page. That is also very helpful indeed.
This book is so good, there were even people at work wanting to check it out!

Editorial Review:

Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama has enlightened the study of literature for more than three decades. Now this text also lightens students' loads with a unique new portable format. Maintaining the rich tradition of Kennedy and Gioia's collective poetic voice, Literature, Portable Edition continues to bring personal warmth and human perspective to the discussion of literature....but in a multi-volume, paperback format that makes bringing the text to class much easier. Featuring the same pagination of the hardcover original, this four-volume paperback set contains all of the critcally acclaimed teaching apparatus AND all of the selections that have made Literature, 9/e, a perennial bestseller--at no additional cost! In this box, you'll find: Part 1: Fiction Part 2 Poetry Part 3 Drama Part 4 Writing

The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets

Ted Kooser

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Recently appointed as the new U. S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets—aspiring or practicing—can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry’s ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts.

 

Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend—a friend who is willing to share everything he’s learned about the art he’s spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.

The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach

Robin Behn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Indispensable 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 16 people found this review helpful.

I discovered this book during my MA program a few years back. At the time, I'd not seen anything quite like it, aside from Lew Turco's Book of Forms, a book that I enjoyed. But since I'm not a primarily formalist poet, I found Turco's book somewhat wanting.

Robin Behn and Chase Twichell's *The Practice of Poetry* provided a needed alternative. It's filled with great generative poetry writing exercises, each accompanied by a short discussion written by the poet/professor who contributed the piece. These introductions are at least as valuable as the assignments themselves: reading them, one sees a poet's mind in action, something very hard to describe or capture.

The most useful of these assignments gets you writing very quickly. David St. John's contribution, a dramatic monologue, for example, urges writers to find a famous person from history or literature and write from that person's perspective. I'll never forget a shy young student writing a monologue in Sherlock Holmes' voice in my workshop.

Other assignments do come off as flaky, and yet the contributors admit as such. One exercise leads poets through a chanting exercise that seems so odd that I'd fear for my job if I tried it in class. Even in a less formal workshop, I'd be reticent about chanting. Of course, if chanting is something you enjoy . . .

The book concludes with two or three essays about revision that every poet needs to read. Beginning poets especially can benefit the wisdom herein.

Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is it variety. The book includes assignments from all ends of the aesthetic spectrum--from Jackson Mac Low to Dana Gioia. So, whether you're a New Formalist, a Neo-Surrealist, or a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E disciple, this book will prove indispensable to your library.

Editorial Review:

A distinctive collection of more than 90 effective poetry-writing exercises combined with corresponding essays to inspire writers of all levels.

In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop

Steve Kowit

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

It is so great that I want to keep writing! 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 14 people found this review helpful.

This book came to me as an excersize work book. I started it and realized that he was reaching a goal with the way he handled the teachings. His way of explaining how a style was built from the bottome up and the steps, as in one chapter after another, made creating so easy.

I stuck to each and every lesson and poem assignment. If it meant research, I took a trip to the library. An adventure in trying different styles! I would put my mind, body and soul into what I would put on paper. We all know that writers have to write.
Some of my old poems were redone with his ideas. My friends saw my revised poems and went "Oh WOW! And this is from the studies from this book?" A compliment for me and applause for his lessons.

I highly suggest any poet, beginner, intermediate or advanced, to do read this book. AND I would suggest going back and redoing the exercises from the start. It was from my open-mindedness and my perserverance that would have me do each exercise. It wasn't work anymore, it was fun!!

Editorial Review:

An illuminating and invaluable guide for beginners wary of modern poetry, as well as for more advanced students who want to sharpen their craft and write poems that expand their technical skills, excite their imaginations, and engage their deepest memories and concerns. Ideal for teachers who have been searching for a way to inspire students with a love for writing--and reading--contemporary poetry.

The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin Classics)

Anonymous

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Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The most readable truest English rendition of the Gita 5 out of 5 stars.
17 of 19 people found this review helpful.

The Bhagavad Gita is the world's most translated scripture. The task for a Gita translator is to effectively take the poetic multilayer Sanskrit original and translate it into English preserving it's flavor allowing it to stand alone without commentary. Few have succeeded. I have read multiple editions of the Gita and,in my Sanskrit studies, read the original in Sanskrit.

While I haven't read all the English translations, Mascaro's translation is the best I have read. It takes the reader to the heart of the Gita, to their own heart and to that of Lord Krishna with practical real instructions on how we should live to be aligned with God. It is a practical nitty gritty instruction manual on how we are to construct and conduct ourselves in our own "life battle".

Gandhi read the Gita as his daily practice; it sustained him. I have found the same experience when I have picked up this volume during my own times of crisis.

If one wants to plumb the depths of the Gita, then I would suggest getting Winthrop Sargent's Bhagavad Gita with the Sanskrit and Sanskrit translation. It is excellent, but a few of the translations are off, and it is dry compared to Mascaro.

There are many commentaries and at present I don't have a favorite one to recommend.

If one wants to explore both the flavor and the depth of the Gita, I would recommend undertaking Sanskrit studies with Vyaas Houston www.americansanskrit.com . He gives weekend trainings to begin to learn Sanskrit as well as immersions into the Gita.
I can assure you, you won't be disappointed.

If you don't have the time or money, Mascaro's translation is a gold mine.

Editorial Review:

The eighteen chapters of The Bhagavad Gita (c. 500 b.c.), the glory of Sanskrit literature, encompass the whole spiritual struggle of a human soul. Its three central themes-love, light, and life-arise from the symphonic vision of God in all things and of all things in God.

Translated by Juan Mascaró
Introduction by Simon Brodbeck