barbarian poets

Going back to the Greek meaning of the word ‘barbarian’ (those who speak a language other than Greek), we can see that all poets are ‘barbarians’ because they speak a different language from the main tribe or polis. The difference can range from a matter of dialect or inflection to a speech that is radically different in terms of word sounds, meanings, syntax, and diction.

simultaneous tapestry

In a poem the lines strain to weave themselves into a simultaneous tapestry of experience.

unselfish act

Translation is the most unselfish act in literature, and must be so.

singularity

Whether you listen to a piece of music, or a poem, or look at a picture on a jug, or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.

—Basil Bunting, The Codex

command economy

Poetry publishing is a decentralized command economy. Demand is not considered in production.

bandoleer

He wore a bandoleer filled with pencils and pens. Always ready for a good write.

prose mind

It’s not possible to read poetry with a prose mind.

pressured speech

The poem as pressured speech.

undoing the damage of haste

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.

—Theodore Roethke, On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke

art deco ditties

If not for his philosophical and aesthetic interests, Wallace Stevens might have composed only art deco ditties.

placeholders

The words in the line were merely placeholders, entities deployed without the efficacy of language.

original or aboriginal

The poet too often grasps for the original, when s/he should be attempting to reach back into the mind’s aboriginal state.

spectacle of speech

The poem as spectacle of speech.

half-done or whole

#14

In poetry, too, all that is whole might only be half-done, and yet all half-done might actually be a whole.

(Literary Aphorisms, 1797-1800)

—Friedrich Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry & Literary Aphorisms, Behler & Struc, trans., Penn. State U. Press, 1968

mind bridge

The image is a mind bridge back to experience.

Plato knew us

Plato knew us to be those idle liars composing idylls upon our lyres.

poetic fecundity

The poet struggles to stay ahead of the poetic fecundity of slang and idiom.

not plague or pandemic

Poetry is not an art form for the mass-media age. It doesn’t create instant hysteria as does a plague or pandemic. Poetry travels quietly and slowly, gradually infecting that portion of the populace predisposed to its life-altering influence.

the mark left is poetry

We forget so easily everything we read.
The mark left is poetry, causes changes in

movement of life.

(entry March 5th, 1963)

Aim for a whole new way of using language. There should be
no artificial abbreviations (of sentences, etc.) in poetry.
Closer to the mind it comes out how? Or the mind closer
to the poem, comes out with its own good poetry.

(entry March 15th, 1963)

I don’t want to force my mind to be clever or force
it to poetry.
What are those other poets talking about.
Is language for speaking or writing,

using or making

(entry August 11th, 1963)

--Joanne Kyger, Strange Big Moon, The Japan and India Journals: 1960-1964,
North Atlantic Book, 2000

poem's test

Test for a poem: No words needed to introduce it and none would help explain it.

content over concept

A poem of concept is generally lesser in weight than a poem of content.

poet's poet

Every poet is a poet’s poet. The audience for serious poetry being comprised largely of other poets.

critic's test

I’m an able critic because I’ve written a sufficient amount of bad poetry.

fig leaf poetry

Le vers alexandrin n’est souvent qu’un cache-sottise.

The alexandrine is most often a fig leaf over stupidity.

—Stendahl (Henri Beyle, 1783-1842), Racine et Shakespeare.

lyric nodes, inert matrix

The epic or long poem consists of coruscating lyric nodes locked within an essentially inert matrix.

falling silent

Fall silent so as to gather strength, summoning the power to speak.

the published poem

To publish is to acknowledge the social function and use of poetry.

hard reading

Poetry is hard reading.

specific point-to-point vividness

Much of his [Stefan Zweig’s] prose rhythm is poetic in the raw sense of being laid out with the specific point-to-point vividness of verse. Often you will find Zweig writing a clause that could match to a line by Rilke.

--Clive James, “Stefan Zweig,” Cultural Amnesia

(I first encountered Zweig’s incredibly lucid prose in his book Erasmus of Rotterdam…I can only imagine how well he reads in German.)

existence elucidated

Poetry is existence elucidated by means of the imagination.

proving ground

The public reading as the proving ground for the poem.

basic formal constraint

The basic formal constraint in contemporary poetry is the width (8.5’’) and length (11”) of a standard-size sheet of paper, along with its typical margin widths.

first and final line

Write each line as though it was the first and final line of the poem.

two kinds of poetry

Great writers must find their distinctive voice, and you can hear Robinson's in "Reuben Bright" (1897). He uses simple rhetoric, the emotion compressed in spare language. As the poet Winfield Townley Scott observed in his notebooks, there are basically two kinds of poetry. One is represented by Hart Crane's line "The seal's wide spindrift gaze toward paradise," the other by Robinson's "And he was all alone there when he died." One is a magic gesture of language, the other "a commentary on human life so concentrated as to give off considerable pressure." The greatest poets combine the two, Scott believed: Shakespeare often, Robinson himself now and then.

—Scott Donaldson, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life (Columbia University Press. © 2007)

tome is tomb

For a poet, tome is tomb.

shelved and thus held dear

After I read the book, I put it in my small library; shelved and thus held dear. Could the author ask for any other tribute?

with a dog's ears

It’s well known that dogs can hear sounds inaudible to human ears. A good reader can sense words and phrases not present in the poem but only adumbrated by their absence.

secular prayer

The poem as secular prayer.

enter at your own risk

Poetry is not a fiefdom or a private domain. It is a city whose gates stand wide; which has never exactly welcomed its newcomers but has always found room for them.

—Eavan Boland, Ronald Duncan Lecture, 1994

iambs on the march

The jackbooted iambs are marching again in their ranks of five.

strains at its tether

The line strains at its tether: Can you sense the tug of a line that has reached its optimal length?

threadbare cloth

A poem of abstractions is a threadbare cloth.

not silence but white noise

Some have called the empty space around the words a kind of silence. But it's the white noise of all the words trying to enter the poem, words clamoring to be heard, text struggling to make itself visible.

It's Chinatown

Sometimes when faced with difficult or complex poetry, the detective’s words to Jake Gittes at the end of the movie Chinatown come to mind: "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

drenched in words

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked with them to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. When they come . . . they come as things in themselves; it is a matter of felicitous juggling!; and no amount of will or emotion can help the thing a bit.

—Hart Crane,The Letters of Hart Crane, November 26, 1921

meaning over matter and sound

The materiality of text is slight. The acoustic effects of language are dismal compared to those of music. Thus, no one is much interested in words devoid of their meanings.

cheap gunsel

Certain critics are like cheap gunsels: A guy who when he can’t talk his way out of a sticky situation, reaches too quickly for his 'canon', and just starts blasting away with ‘Shakespeare’ or ‘Milton’.

audacious yet convincing

The metaphor/simile should open with audacity causing disbelief and close convincingly with a felt truth.

resists demystification

Much to a critic’s dismay, true poetry resists all manner of demystification.

apt rather than exact

In a poem, the expression may be apt rather than exact.

poet's first obligation

Poetry’s freedom resembles, thus, as Plato pointed out, the freedom of a child, and the freedom of play, and the freedom of dreams. It is none of these. It is the freedom of the creative spirit.

And because poetry is born in this root life where the powers of the soul are active in common, poetry implies an essential requirement of totality or integrity. Poetry is the fruit neither of the intellect alone, nor of the imagination alone. Nay more, it proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together. And the first obligation imposed on the poet is to consent to be brought back to the hidden place, near the center of the soul, where the totality exists in the state of a creative source.

—Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition In Art & Poetry (Pantheon Books, 1953)

words working against the poem

In an odd way the words are often working against the poem.

too late for that last line

You expected that that last line would save all it followed?

mission of art

It is the mission of art to remind man that he is human.

—Ben Shahn (quoted in Karsh, 50 Year Retrospective, photographer Yousuf Karsh)

multitudinous yet unified

The poem was multitudinous in aspect, yet unified in its effect.

expert at excerpts

A critic can be judged by the expertness of his/her excerpting.

anchor word

Look for an anchor word in each line of the poem. If a line lacks a word of significant weight, then that line is not advancing the poem.

reanimates remembrance

Imagery reanimates remembrance.

sonic stitching

Meter: the sonic stitching that holds fast the seam of the line.

language in extremis

The poem as language in extremis.

kaleidosonic

The poem was ‘kaleidosonic’.

everything for depth & height

One complaint lodged against Sappho—it is lodged against Emily Dickinson too, and that tells us something about the complaint—is that her range is narrow. Even if the charge could be proved correct, and it cannot, we would want to remember that lyric poetry cares very little for breadth and width, everything for depth and height. Whatever the mysterious criteria for great European lyric may be, compression, intensity of feeling, and complexity and subtlety of reflection are surely high among them.

—W.R. Johnson, The Idea of the Lyric, U. of California Press, 1982 (p. 48)

poetry is hypertext

A great poem is hypertext into the universal & eternal.

Ars Poetica Library (work in progress)

A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H.Abrams, Literary Reference, Holt Rinehart Winston 1988 * Selected Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire, Guillaume Apollinaire (R. Shattuck, trans.), Poetry Essays, New Directions 1971 * The Poetics, Aristotle, Poetry Essays, Various Editions * Essays Literary & Critical by Matthew Arnold, Matthew Arnold, Poetry Essays, JM Dent & Son 1906 * Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction, Derek Attridge, Formalism, Metrics, Cambridge U. Press 1996 * The Dyer's Hand, W.H. Auden, Poetry Essays, Vintage 1989 * Forewords & Afterwords, W.H. Auden, Poetry Essays, Vintage 1989 * Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Erich Auerbach, Literary Criticism, Doubleday Anchor Books 1957 * The Poetics of Reverie, Gaston Bachelard, Philosophy/Aesthetics, Beacon Press 1971 * The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard (Maria Jolas, trans.), Philosophy/Aesthetics, Beacon Press 1969 * Onward: Contemporary Poetry & Poetics, Peter Baker ed., Poetry Essays, Peter Lang Publishing 1996 * An Owen Barfield Reader, Owen Barfield, Poetry Criticism, Wesleyan U. Press 1999 * The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters, Tony Barnstone & Chou Ping, trans., Poetry Essays, Shambhala 1996 * The Making of the Auden Canon , Jos. Warren Beach, Poetry Criticism, Russell & Russell 1971 * Illuminations, Walter Benjamin, Literary Criticism, Schoken Books 1978 * Reflections, Walter Benjamin (Peter Demetz, ed.), Literary Criticism, Schoken Books 1978 * Content's Dream, Charles Bernstein, Poetry Essays, Sun & Moon 1986 * A Poetics, Charles Bernstein, Poetry Essays, Harvard U. Press 1992 * Anxiety of Influence (2nd edition), Harold Bloom, Literary Criticism, Oxford U. Press 1987 * Leaping Poetry, Robert Bly, Poetry Essay & Anthology * News of the Universe, Robert Bly, Poetry Essays & Anthology, Sierra Club Books 1980 * A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art & Vocation, Louise Bogan (Robt. Phelps & Ruth Limmer, eds.), Poetry Essays, McGraw Hill 1970 * Object Lessons, Eavan Boland, Poetry Essays, Norton 1995 * The Act and the Place of Poetry, Yves Bonnefoy, Poetry Essays, U. of Chicago Press 1989 * Borges Selected Non-Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry & Writing, Penguin 2000 * Borges On Writing, Jorge Luis Borges (di Giovanni, Macshane, Halpern, interviewers), Interviews, Ecco Press 1972 * In the Blue Pharmacy: Essays on Poetry and Other Transformations, Marianne Boruch,Poetry Essays, Trinity U. Press 2005 * Yeats at Work, Curtis Bradford, ed., Poetry Manuscript Analysis, Southern Illinois Univ. Press 1965 * The Well-Wrought Urn, Cleanth Brooks, Poetry Criticism, Harvest Books 1956 * The Main of Light: On the Concept of Poetry, Justus Buchler, Philosophy, Oxford 1974 * The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, Kenneth Burke, Essays: Poetry, Philosophy, Vintage 1941 * A Phlosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke (J. T. Boulton, ed.), Philosophy/Aesthetics, U. of Notre Dame Press 1968 * Selected Essays & Reviews, Hayden Carruth, Poetry Essays, Copper Canyon 1996 * Language and Myth, Ernst Cassirer, Philosophy, Dover 1953 * How Does A Poem Mean, John Ciardi, Poetry Essays, Houghton Mifflin 1959 * Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Literary Essays, Various Editions The Language of Criticism & the Structure of Poetry, R.S. Crane, Literary Criticism, U. of Toronto 1953* Selected Writing of Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, editor, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1966 * Poetry & Literature: An Introduction to Its Criticism and History, Benedetto Croce (Giovanni Gullace, trans.), Literary Criticism, S. Illinois U. Press 1981 * The Problem of Style, J.V. Cunningham, Literary Essays, Fawcett Publications 1966 * Poetry As Persuasion, Carl Dennis, Poetry Essays, U. of Georgia Press 2001Poetry in our Time, Babette Deutsch, Poetry Criticism, Columbia U. Press 1952 * Art as Experience, John Dewey, Philosophy, Perigree Books 1980 * Sorties, James Dickey, Poetry Essays, LSU Press 1971 * Walking Light, Stephen Dunn, Poetry Essays, Boa Editions 2001 * The Use of Poetry & the Use of Criticism, T.S. Eliot, Poetry Criticism, Faber & Faber 1933 * The Modern Tradition, Richard Ellman & Chas. Fieldelson, Jr., eds., Literary, Cultural & Art Essays,Oxford 1965 * Complete Essays & Other Writings by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poetry Essays & Philosophy, Modern Library 1950 * Seven Types of Ambiguity, William Empson, Poetry Criticism, New Directions 1966 * Expansive Poetry: Essays on the New Narrative and New Formalism, Frederick Feirstein, ed., Poetry Essays, Story Line Press 1989 * The Ghost of Meter: Culture & Prosody in American Free Verse, Annie Finch, Formalism/Metrics, U. of Michigan Press 2000 * An Exaltation of Forms, Annie Finch & Katherine Varnes, eds., Formalism/Metrics, U. of Michigan Press 2002 * Romantic Criticism 1800-1850, R.A. Foakes, ed., Poetry Essays. Arnold Publishers 1968 * A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetics Stuart Friebert, David Walker & David Young, eds., Poetry Essays, Oberlin College Press 1997 * Robert Frost on Writing, Robert Frost (Elaine Barry, editor), Poetry Essays, Rutgers 1973 * Selected Prose of Robert Frost, Robert Frost (H. Cox & E.C. Lathem, eds.), Collier Books 1968 * Feeling As A Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry, Alice Fulton, Poetry Essays, Graywolf Press 1999 * Poetic Meter & Poetic Form (revised edition), Paul Fussell, Formalism/Metrics, Random House 1979 * The Poet's Work: 29 Masters of the 20th Century Poetry on the Origin and Practice of Their Art, Reginald Gibbons, ed., Poetry Essays, Houghton Mifflin 1979 * Twentieth-Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry, Dana Gioia, David Mason & Meg Schoerke, eds., Poetics, McGraw Hill 2003 * Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry & American Culture, Dana Gioia, Poetry Essays, Graywolf Press 1992 * Proofs & Theories, Louise Glück,Poetry Essays. Ecco Press 1994 * The Collected Works: Essays on Art & Literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (John Gearey, editor), Essays: Art & Poetry, Princeton U. Press 1986 * The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Robert Graves, Poetry Essay, Farrar Straus Giroux 1966 * Oxford Addresses on Poetry, Robert Graves, Poetry Essays, Doubleday 1962 * The Sighted Singer: Two Works on Poetry for Readers and Writers, Allen R. Grossman (Mark Halliday, interviewer), Poetics, Johns Hopkins U. Press 1991 * Of Manywhere-at-Once, Bob Grumman, Poetry Essays * New Expansive Poetry, R.S. Gwynn, ed., Poetry Essays, Story Line Press 1995 * Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry, 1970-76, Donald Hall, Poetry Essays, U. of Michigan Press 1978 * Poetry & Ambition, Donald Hall, Poetry Essays, U. of Michigan Press 1988 * Twentieth Century Pleasures, Robert Hass, Poetry Essays, Ecco Press 1984 * Robert Hayden: Collected Prose, Robert Hayden (F. Glaysher, ed.; foreword by Wm. Meredith), Literary Essays, U. of Michigan Press 1984 * Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-78, Seamus Heaney, Poetry Essays, Farrar Straus Giroux 1980 * The Redress of Poetry. Seamus Heaney, Poetry Essays, Farrar Straus Giroux 1995 * Poetry, Language, Thought, Martin Heidegger (trans. by Albert Hofstadter), Philosophy, Harper Colophon Books 1975 * Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, W.N. Herbert & Matthew Hollis, eds., Poetry Essays, Bloodaxe Books 2000 * Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, Jane Hirshfield, Poetry Essays, HarperCollins 1997 * Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form, Philip Hobsbaum, Formalism/ Metrics, Routledge 1999 * Essentials Of Literary Criticism, Philip Hobsbaum, Poetry Criticism, 1983 * Tradition and Experiment in English Poetry, Philip Hobsbaum. Poetry Criticism 1979 * Rhyme's Reason, John Hollander, Formalism/Metrics, Yale U. Press 1981 * My Emily Dickinson, Susan Howe, Poetry Criticism, North Atlantic Books 1985 * Donald Justice in Conversation, Philip Hoy, interviewer, Interviews * The Triggering Town, Richard Hugo, Poetry Essays, Norton 1979 * Speculations: Essays on Humanism & Philsophy of Art, T.E. Hulme, Philosophy Essays, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1987 * The Auden Generation, Samuel Hynes, Poetry Criticism, Princeton U. Press 1982 * The Failure of Poetry, The Promise of Language, Laura (Riding) Jackson (John Nolan, ed.), Poetry Essays, U. of Michigan 2007 * The Instant of Knowing, Josephine Jacobsen, Poetry Essay, Library of Congress (pamphlet) * The Reaper Essays, Mark Jarman & Robert McDowell, Poetry Essays, Story Line Press 1996 * Kipling, Auden & Company: Essays & Reviews 1935-1964, Randall Jarrell, Poetry Essays & Reviews, Farrar Straus Giroux 1980 * Poetry and The Age, Randall Jarrell, Poetry Essays & Reviews. Vintage 1959 * The Complete Perfectionist: A Poetics of Work, Juan Ramon Jiménez (Christopher Maurer, trans. & ed.), Poetry Aphorisms, Doubleday 1997 * Donald Justice Reader, Donald Justice, Poetry Essays, University Press of New England 2003 * The Pound Era, Hugh Kenner, Poetry Criticism, U. of California 1971 * The Romantic Image, Frank Kermode, Literary Criticism, Vintage 1964 * The Poetry of Criticism: Horace Epistles II and Ars Poetica, Rpss S. Kirkpatrick, Poetry Criticism, U. of Alberta Press 1990 * Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950, Melissa Kwasny, ed., Poetry Essays, Wesleyan U. Press 2004 * Feeling and Form, Susanne K.Langer, Philosophy/Aesthetics , Chas. Scribners 1953 * Paul Valéry: An Anthology, James Lawler, editor, Art & Literary Essays, Routledge 1977 * Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, L.T. Lemon & M.J. Reis, trans., Literary Criticism, U. of Nebraska Press 1965 * Light Up the Cave, Denise Levertov, Poetry New Directions New & Selected Essays, Denise Levertov, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1992 * Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats & Modernism, James Logenbach, Poetry Criticism, Oxford 1998 * On the Sublime, Loginius, Aesthetics, Various Editions * In Search of Duende, Federico Garcia Lorca (N. T. DiGiovanni & C. Maurer, trans.), Essays, New Directions 1999 * Poetry & Experience, Archibald MacLeish, Poetry Essays, Houghton Mifflin 1960 * Creative Intuition in Art & Poetry, Jacques Maritain, Poetry & Art Essays, Pantheon 1953 * Versification: A Short Introduction, James McAuley, Formalism/Metrics. Michigan State U. Press 1966 * Worlds into Words: Understanding Modern Poems, Diane Middlebrook, Poetry Criticism, Norton 1980 * The Witness of Poetry, Czeslaw Milosz, Poetry Essays, Harvard U. Press 1983 * Selected Essays of Eugenio Montale, Eugenio Montale (Jonathan Galassi, trans.), Poetry Essays, Ecco 1982 * Predilections: literary essays, Marianne Moore, Poetry Essays, Viking Press 1955 * The Bedford Glossary of Critical & Literary Terms, Ross Murfin & Supryia M. Ray, Literary Reference, Bedford 1997 * Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy/Aesthetics, Modern Library 2000 * Rules for the Dance: Handbook for Writing & Reading Metrical Verse, Mary Oliver, Formalism/Metrics, Mariner Books 1998 * A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver, Poetry Reference, Harvest Books 1994 * The Other Voice, Octavio Paz, Poetry Essays, Harvest Books 1992 * The Bow & the Lyre, Octavio Paz, U. of Texas Press 1973 * Poetics of Inderterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage, Majorie Perloff, Poetry Criticism, Princeton U. Press 1981 * The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide, Robert Pinsky, Formalism/Metrics, Farrar Straus Giroux 1998 * Poetry And The World, Robert Pinsky, Poetry Criticism, Ecco Press 1988 * Selected Prose: 1909-1965, Ezra Pound, Literary Essays, New Directions * ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1934 * Guide to Kulchur, Ezra Pound, Poetry Essays, New Directions Literary Essays Ezra Pound, Poetry Essays, New Directions * The Imagist Poem, William Pratt, ed., Poetry Criticism, Dutton * The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetics (3rd Edition), Alex Preminger, ed., Poetry Reference, Princeton U. Press 1993 * Like a Writer, Francine Prose, Writing Essays * Disjunctive Poetics: From Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky to Susan Howe, Peter Quatermain, Poetry Criticism, Cambridge 1992 * Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau, Writing Essay in Versions of Single Story, New Directions 1981 * Assays, Kenneth Rexroth, Poetry & Literary Essays, New Directions 1961 * American Poetry in the Twentieth Century, Kenneth Rexroth, Poetry Essays, Continuum Book 1973 * Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1986, Adrienne Rich, Poetry Essays, Norton 1986 * On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978, Adrienne Rich, Poetry Essays, Norton 1979 * What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, Adrienne Rich, Poetry Essays, Norton 1993 * Practical Criticism, I. A. Richards, Literary Criticism, Harvest Books 1956 * Letters on Cezanne, Rainer Maria Rilke (ed. Clara Rilke; trans. by Joel Agee), Art Essays, Fromme International 1985 * Where Silence Reigns: Selected Prose, Rainer Maria Rilke (G. Craig Houston, trans.), Poetry Essays, New Directions 1978 * Letters to a Young Poet Rainer Maria Rilke (M. D. Herter, trans.), Poetry Essays, Norton 1934 * Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke 1943-1963, Theodore Roethke (David Wagoner, ed.), Poet's Journal, Doubleday 1972 * On the Poet and His Craft: Selected Prose, Theodore Roethke (Ralph J. Mills, ed.), Poetry Essays, U. of Washington Press 1965 * The Dream of the Marsh Wren, Patiann Rogers, Poetry Essays, Milkweed Editions 1999 * The Modern Poetic Sequence, M.L.Rosenthal & Sally M. Gall, U. of Oxford Press 1983 * The Life of Poetry, Muriel Rukeyser, Poetry Essays, Paris Press 1996The World of Poetry: Poets & Critics on the Art & Function of Poetry, Clive Sansom, ed., Poetry Quotes, Phoenix House 1959 * Naïve & Sentimental Poetry - On the Sublime, Friedrich von Schiller, Philosophy, Poetry, Aesthetics, Frederick Ungar Publishing 1966 * Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Friedrich Schlegel (trans. by Behler & Struc), Poetics, Penn. St. Univ. Press 1968 * John Dryden on Dramatic Poetry and other critical essays, George Watson, ed., Poetry Essays, J.M. Dent & Sons 1962 * Lives of the Poets, Michael Schmidt, Poetry Bios and Commentary, Vintage 2000 * Schopenhauer: Essays & Aphorisms, Arthur Schopenhauer (RJ Hollingdale, trans.), Philosophy Penguin 1970 * A Poet's Journal: Days of 1945-1951, George Seferis, Poet's Journal, Belknap (Harvard U. Press) 1974 * Prose Keys to Modern Poetry, Karl Shapiro, ed., Poetry Essays, U. of Nebraska Press 1962 * A Defence of Poetry, Sir Philip Sidney, Poetry Essay, Various Editions Leopardi and the Theory of Poetry, G. Singh, Literary Criticism. U. of Kentucky Press 1964 * A Poet's Notebook, Edith Sitwell, Poetry Quotes, Macmillan & Co. 1944 * De/Compositions, W.S. Snodgrass, Poetry Praxis, Graywolf Press 2001 * The Making of a Poem, Stephen Spender, Poetry Essays, Norton 1962 * House That Jack Built: Cthe Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, Jack Spicer (ed. Peter Gizzi), Poetry Essays, Wesleyan U. Press 1998 * Where The Angels Come Toward Us, David St. John, Poetry Essays, White Pine Press 1995 * Appreciation: Painting, Poetry and Prose, Leo Stein, Art Essays, Random House 1947 * Writing the Australian Crawl, William Stafford, Poetry Essays, U. of Michigan Press 1978 * Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter, Timonthy Steele, Poetry Essays, U. of Arkansas Press 1990 * How Writing is Written: Volume II of the Previously Uncollected Writings, Gertrude Stein (Robert Bartlett Haas, ed.), Essays, Black Sparrow Press 1974 * The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality & the Imagination, Wallace Stevens, Poetry Essays, Vintage 1951 * Sur Plusiers Beaux Sujects: Wallace Stevens' Commonplace Books, Wallace Stevens (Milton Bates, ed.), Poet's Commonplace Book, Stanford U. Press 1989 * Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, Susan Stewart, Poetry Essays, University of Chicago Press 2002 * Theories & Documents of Contemporary Art: A Source Book of Artist's Writings, Kristine Stiles & Peter Selz, eds., Art Essays U. of California 1996 * The Three Perfections: Chinese Painting, Poetry, and Calligraphy, Michael Sullivan, Poetry & Art, George Braziller 1999 * The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (3rd Edition), Lewis Turco, Formalism/Metrics, U. of New England Press 2000 * 45 Contemporary Poems: The Creative Process, Albeta Turner, Poetry Praxis, Longman 1985 * Lives of the Poets: The Story of One Thousand Years of English & American Poetry, Louis Untermeyer, Short Biographical Essays, Replica Books 1999 * Introduction to Poetry: Commentaries on Thirty Poems, Mark Van Doren, Poetry Essays, Hill & Wang 1968 * Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari (E. L. Seeley, trans.), Artist Biographies, Noonday 1957 * Soul Says, Helen Vendler, Literary Criticism, Harvard U. Press 1995 * Words Chosen Out of Desire, Helen Vendler, Literary Criticism, U. of Tenn. Press 1984 * Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics in the 1990s, Mark Wallace, Poetry Essays, U. of Alabama Press 2001 * Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Eliot Weinberger & Octavio Paz, editors, Poetry Essay, Moyer Bell 1987 * Concepts of Criticism, René Wellek, Literary Criticism, Yale U. Press 1963 * The Embodiment of Knowledge, William Carlos William, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1974 * Selected Essays of William Carlos. Williams William Carlos, Poetry Essays, New Directions 1969 * In Defense of Reason, Yvor Winters, Poetry Essays, U. of Denver Press 1937 * The Japanese Haiku, Kenneth Yasuda, Poetry Criticism, Chas. E. Tuttle 1957 * Essays & Introductions, W. B. Yeats, Literary Essays,Collier Books 1961 * A Defence of Ardor, Adam Zagajewski (Clare Cavanaugh, trans.), Poetry and Art Essays, Farrar Straus Giroux 2004 * Multum in Parvo: an essay in poetic imagination, Carl Zigrosser, Poetry Essays, George Braziller 1965 * Lyrical Philosophy, Jan Zwicky, Poetry, Philosophy, U. of Toronto Press 1992 * Wisdom & Metaphor, Jan Zwicky, Poetry, Philosophy, Gaspereau Press 2003

I want to be left alone

Like Garbo, it's only the famous poet who wants to be left alone, who thinks poetry should be hiding itself in some secret bower where only the initiated need know where to find it.

definition refuted

Let your next poem openly refute your last definition of poetry.

good story

A good story can't be told badly.

uncomfortably suited

A poem is uncomfortably suited within any circumference of understanding.

voice and style

'Voice', as an attribute, is often ridiculed because it is mistaken for a poetic technique. But voice is nothing more than style inflected by one's favored themes and subject matter. And not unlike the word 'style', voice is used too often and used in place of the hard work of describing the characteristics of the writing under consideration.

don't turn your back on them

As poets we love words and won’t turn our backs on them. As poets we trust words but we don’t turn our backs on them.

pure or purple

Pure poetry so often flirts with the purple.

see into and overhear

The poet sees and sees into, hears and overhears.

remembrance

If you analyze well your most poetic impressions and imaginings—the ones that most exalt you and pull you outside of yourself and of the real world—you would find that they and the pleasure they cause (at least after childhood) consist totally or chiefly in remembrance.

—Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone dei pensieri

word-breeder

Poet, be a word-breeder!

bookmark lost

A pity, but I couldn’t bear to go back into those pages even to save my favorite bookmark.