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by: Mary Oliver
List Price: $14.00Amazon.com's Price: $11.20 You Save: $2.80 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.1
EAN: 9780156724005
ISBN: 0156724006
Label: Harvest Books
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: August 15, 1994
Publisher: Harvest Books
Sales Rank: 6513
Studio: Harvest Books
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
This slender guide by Mary Oliver deserves a place on the shelves of any budding poet. In clear, accessible prose, Oliver (winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for poetry) arms the reader with an understanding of the technical aspects of poetry writing. Her lessons on sound, line (length, meter, breaks), poetic forms (and lack thereof), tone, imagery, and revision are illustrated by a handful of wonderful poems (too bad Oliver was so modest as to not include her own). What could have been a dry account is infused throughout with Oliver's passion for her subject, which she describes as 'a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.' One comes away from this volume feeling both empowered and daunted. Writing poetry is good, hard work.
Product Description:
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - The joy of Poetry
Mary Oliver makes variations of poetry styles clear and useful to a serious writer of poetry or one wanting to change from prose to poetry. Easy for a beginner, good reference for anyone.
Rating: - Just what it says it is
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 ... Read More
Rating:  - An Excellent Handbook
This book by Mary Oliver is an excellent resource for any poet seeking to improve their understanding of the craft. She acknowledges the need for creativity and experimentalism, yet does so by confirming time-honored techniques and explanations of formal structures. I tend toward the free verse form of poetry, but do dabble in iambic rhyme. I have always felt that structure is the enemy of good poetry, but have also felt the inexplicable contradiction of appreciating Robert Frost and Shakespeare. This ... Read More
Rating: - Solid Advice Within
My title says it all. I found this small book filled with solid advice. Mary Oliver knows of what she writes and writes it well. I rank this with Richard Hugo's "The Triggering Town" as a must have resource for poets and poetry lovers. It is full of insights that can be appreciated by all writers.
Do yourself a favor and buy it.
Rating: - Like the Title--A Poetry Handbook
Mary Oliver has put together a book that, in some ways, reads like a poem.
She has a very simple and direct style to describe diction, sound, and imagery, some of the foundations of poetry. She also, however, drops in some of the mystery of being a poet, the silky threads of what the experience is like to create.
This is a quick and beneficial read for a new poet and has some great reminders (and great poems) for those who have been in the craft longer. I don't think this would be of ... Read More
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