Be a Poet

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Twickenham Press, 2007 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 420 pages

Originally published in 2007 by Twickenham Press, Be a Poet! is a friendly, accessible guidebook for beginning poets of all ages and situations, containing many exercises designed to expand their repertoire of rhythms and forms. Bogen uses examples from canonical poets like Carl Sandburg and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as three contemporary poets whom she has interviewed personally about their writing habits and tricks. This handbook for the poetically inclined includes in-depth coverage of words and how to use them effectively, plus chapters on rhyming, rhythm, the iamb from blank verse to the various forms of the sonnet, and exotica like art songs, Pindaric and Horatian odes, and terza rima. Its concluding appendix listing addresses of writers' organizations is especially useful.

From inside the book

Contents

INTRODUCTION
11
WHITHER WILST WIT?
19
WORDS WORDS WORDS
49
SPECIAL EFFECTS WITH WORDS
75
RHYMES AKA SOUNDCORRESPONDENCES
109
RHYTHM AND METER
143
BLANK VERSE TO SONNET
177
A POTPOURRI OF OTHER TRADITIONAL FORMS
235
THAT MYSTERIOUS ILLUSIVE
301
GETTING IT ALL TOGETHER THEN SOME
343
USEFUL ORGANIZATIONS
377
MAGS AND ZINES
383
BIBLIOGRAPHY
395
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
401
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

NANCY BOGEN is a CUNY professor emeritus and head of The Lark Ascending, a New York-based performance group. Her writing credits include three novels of ideas: Klytaimnestra Who Stayed at Home, Bobe Mayse: A Tale of Washington Square, and Bagatelle*Guinevere by Felice Rothman. She is married and lives in New York City.

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