You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [0]
Write
Poetry
JEFF MOCK
WRITER'S DIGEST BOOKS
CINCINNATI, OHIO
You Can Write Poetry. Copyright © 1998 by Jeff Mock. Printed and bound in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Writer's Digest Books, an imprint of F& W Publications, Inc., 1507 Dana Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45207. (800) 289-0963. First edition.
Other fine Writer's Digest Books are available from your local bookstore or direct from the publisher.
02 01 00 99 98 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mock, Jeff.
You can write poetry / by Jeff Mock.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-89879-825-6 (pbk. :alk. paper)
1. Poetry—Authorship. 2. Creative writing. I. Title.
PN1059. A9M63 1998
808.1—dc21 98-12073
CIP
Editors: Jack Heffron and Chantelle Bentley
Production Editor: Nicole R. Klungle
Cover designers: Brian Roeth and Mary Barnes Clark Designers: Sandy Conopeotis Kent and Mary Barnes Clark
PERMISSIONS
"Pale Spring" by Ian Clarke is reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in The Laurel Review.
"My Father as Houdini" by Mark Drew is reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in The Gettysburg Review.
"Building a New Home" by Tim Geiger is reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Defined Providence.
"We Grow Accustomed to the Dark" by Kathleen Halme is reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in The Gettysburg Review.
"When" by Katherine Riegel is reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in The River King Poetry Supplement.
"The Waking" by Theodore Roethke is reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Originally appeared in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.
"One Sunday Each Spring" by Margot Schilpp is reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in Connecticut Review.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks go to Cinda Gibbon for reading the manuscript-in-progress, making corrections and offering sage advice; to Peter Stitt for letting me out of the office and giving me time to write; to Jack Heffron for suggesting this book and running the show; and to Joan, wife and friend, for her inspiration and encouragement.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Mock is a professor of creative writing at Southern Connecticut State University and the author of Evening Travelers, a limited-edition, fine-press chapbook. Formerly an editor of The Gettysburg Review, he has published poems in The Chicago Review, The Laurel Review and New England Review, among several others. He has received the Greensboro Review Literary Award in Poetry, a Teaching-Writing Fellowship at the University of Alabama and a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 WHY WRITE?
The passion for poetry and the impulse to write; poetry as a craft and an art.
2 SHARPENING THE PENCIL
The nature of poetry and the poet's work; inspiration, imagination and getting down to business.
3 AN ASIDE: ON READING POETRY
The pleasure and illumination of reading poems.
4 FRAMING THE HOUSE: THE ART OF POETRY, PART ONE
The nature of language and the effects of words—the straightforward, the subtle and the sly; imagery, painting with words.
5 AN ASIDE: ON THE FUSSY DETAILS
The necessity of writing well and correctly.
6 FURNISHING THE HOUSE: THE ART OF POETRY, PART TWO
The grace of poetic expression: figures of speech, devices of sound, rhyme and meter.
7 AN ASIDE: ON LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW & LOOKING IN
Tapping into the imagination and trusting its gifts.
8 FORMAL GARDENS & WILD FLOWERS: FORMS & FREE VERSE
The shapes of poems: the stanza, traditional forms and free verse.
9 AN ASIDE: ON WORK, LUCK & OTHER ACTS OF IMAGINATION
Preparing to write, working with luck and