Poetry: A Survivor's Guide

Poetry: A Survivor’s Guide has earned high praise from students, teachers, and readers from around the globe for its playful sincerity and idiosyncratic humor and for its approach to a subject both loved and feared. Updated and expanded, including six new sections, the second edition probes a range of strategies for inspiring students and aspiring poets on the ways poetry relates to their own lives. These include the delights and pitfalls of individual meditation, the complications of identity and appropriation, and the uses and utility of poetry as a tool of social change.The second edition also includes a curated companion website for teachers, students, and aspiring poets that features poetry examples, writing prompts and exercises, and resources for publishing poetry. Online resources to accompany this book are available at:https://bloomsbury.pub/poetry-a-survivors-guide-2e.

Reviews

Divided into two main sections: Reading and Writing, this ‘survivor’s guide’ touches on everything from sections on poetry basics like enjambment and rhythm, to ‘reader’s block’ and advice on applying to MFA programs and submitting to literary magazines. It includes bits of guidance (‘Close study of how a line ends and moves into the next is as good as any entry point in examining a poem’) to moments of reassurance (‘There’s no need to finish reading an epic poem you only got halfway through. Its purpose was to be read halfway’).