The Practicing Poet Update

My new craft book, The Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics, is just about to enter the world. I can’t wait to share it with you!

Organized into ten sections with each devoted to a poetic concept, The Practicing Poet begins with “Discovering New Material,” “Finding the Best Words,” “Making Music,” “Working with Sentences and Line Breaks,” and  “Crafting Surprise.” The concepts become progressively more sophisticated, moving on to “Achieving Tone,” “Dealing with Feelings,” “Transforming Your Poems,” and “Rethinking and Revising.” The final section, “Publishing Your Book,” covers manuscript organization, book promotion, and presentation of a good public reading.

The book includes thirty brief craft essays, each followed by a model poem and analysis of the poem’s craft, then a prompt based on the poem. Ten recyclable bonus prompts are also included. Ten Top Tips lists are each loaded with poetry wisdom from an accomplished poet.

The Practicing Poet pushes poets beyond the basics and encourages the continued reading, learning, and writing of poetry. It is suitable as a textbook in the classroom, a guidebook in a workshop, or an at-home tutorial for the practicing poet working independently.

The craft essays, poems, and top tips lists include the work of 113 contemporary poets.  Here’s a LIST of all the contributors.

The Craft Tips were contributed by 30 accomplished poets, the model poems by another 30 fabulous poets. I’m especially excited about section X, “Publishing Your Book,” which assumes that most poets aspire to have a first or a next book published. April Ossmann and Alberto Rios both contributed outstanding and useful pieces on manuscript organization.

I’m also excited for readers to get their first view of the ten Top Tips lists, one per section. I invited ten amazing poets to each contribute a list of their best pieces of poetry wisdom. You will love these!

Also included are 60 sample poems written to the prompts. You will fall in love with many of these poems, all contributed by subscribers to my monthly Poetry Newsletter. They suggest the directions and possibilities of the prompts.

People keep saying that I’ve gotten this book put together quickly. But really, I’ve been working on it for more than three years. Now I’m just about ready to launch this new baby. Stay tuned.