A Book for Every Poet
929243
This book stimulates the muse of the novice and experienced poets, offering exercises that are inspirational, imaginative and fun.

With an accommodating and insightful approach, author Patty Zion explores practical tools to construct solid and rich poetry.  Among many poetic elements, she addresses form, style, metaphors, and imagery.

I highly recommend teachers of poetry utilize this book as an instructional aid, for the chapters are organized to straightforwardly guide the student with his/her writing journey -- from the "attention-getter" opening to the memorable ending (an "user-friendly" book, indeed).

Like the thesaurus and rhyming dictionary, Nurturing a Poem is a reference book that should grace every poet's desk.
3989664
This collection of short poems is a fantastic read. Every poem is finely crafted, exploring the introspections of the author. From the poems, the author seems introverted and shy, so to reveal her deepest feelings and reflections is truly courageous.
1494205
This is an amazing book. You should buy and read this soon. All of the poems are very impressive, and you will read these again and again. What a sensitive and emotional mind the poet has! And you might notice that you have a sort of it in your inside. I strongly recommend.
3592113
I don't read a whole lot of poetry to be honest. But in this case, what a beautiful, lush book of poetry. Rosebud Ben-Oni creates mini-worlds in every poem that split apart boundaries, ethnicities, and borders, and at the same time transcend them. The lines resonates as in these from Shoal:

"Tonight you die quiet and sudden in a dream,
God staggering through the Galapagos,
pinning the birds like brooches
as they twitter his nerves,
all that you knew
to be untrue
intangible as the blue base of a flame"

The best poetry for me isn't just pretty sets of words, but a construction, a creation that actually takes you some place, like a song crafted into a structure of sorts. Almost all the poems in Solecism do exactly that, challenging, prodding, pushing. Lives of Carrion illustrates this:

"I fear the day we reap
the hour in being forgotten,

seek warmth from the ones
who take it away. Tomorrow he'll find us

and rip apart the henhouse. You say the cripple
who coaxes errant vines up the trelis

once led a tank battle in these fields.
For now all is quiet in the North

I let her bite once more
A nudge of teeth and spittle-blood."

Solecism is a grammatical terms for a word that's used in an untraditional or nonstandard way. Rosebud's poetry is brimming with thematic solecisms, words and ideas that may be untraditional in their use, but recall all the most important emotions and passions we share in the most eloquent ways.
2473752
A lovely collection of poems. This book made a wonderful gift for friends who enjoy the art of poetry. Ms. Shehadi is a wonderful writer. I also purchased one of her children's books previously. She's clearly a versatile writer. Don't sleep on this writer. She may not be a NY Times best seller, but I am certainly looking forward to her next book. Hoping for some fiction.
2446463
An eclectic collection of poems that I enjoyed immensely. There's something for everyone in this book and I highly recommend it.
1882595
At first glance, Tsung's collection is just good poetry: simple, seething, passionate, and entirely enjoyable. Williamss illustrations help to both complement and complicate whats going on on the physical page, and help to further center the aesthetic in the readers mind. Always harkening back to the title, Tsung interrogates gender, affect, being, time, and identity, and, upon rereading, I see Tsung's poems fitting masterfully into contemporary poetry. The images and topics she deploys bubble up from a long literary tradition, tracing the personal onto the philosophical and political, exploring questions that plague someone devoted to the task of healing, of becoming soft, of becoming human. The vulnerability of the I is commendable and does nothing short of engulfing the reader into a text that delightfully borders between the quotidian and the lyric. This is a must-read over and over again in one sitting kind of a chapbook.
3836642
This was a wonderful book, very easy to read, and including hundreds of poems of all eras and genres... it provides a good education on poetic forms and ideas, with each chapter including many examples of the topic being discussed... and at the end there is a huge anthology of poems, many of which were new to me, which made it a real bonus.
4428290
Everyone should read these poems.  Every single one of them. They bring up tears choked down for years, as he writes about everyday life in sublime detail with an honesty that's rare.  He writes about love, anxiety, fear and pain, but mostly love because everything he writes is honest to the core, deeply connected, so it gives me a sense of things continuing even after we're gone.  Poets reach for the kind of truth Grapes seems to live inside, effortlessly.  He tells it the way it is, for him, and so for all of us.  This particular collection of poems addresses age, and memory, the fleeting quality of time, life, beauty. And Jack Grapes captures it all in a way that gives me hope, even when I'm feeling a little despairing.  My favorites "Oblivion", "Lake Pontchartain Seawall" and a wrenching "you" poem, "Closing the Book."  Buy this book!
794073
Poems you know and love, poems you have never met, and poems that are so politically correct that they sink under their own gloss. This is a book to look through again and again.  Learning by heart doesn't have to mean memorize.  It has to do with understanding. Oh, and the art is magnificent.
1493751
Laura Yes Yes is an inspiration and one of the premier poets of our generation.  A prolific voice for women's rights and a magnificent stage artist, her energy translates effortlessly to the page.  This book is a must-have for the sincere poet enthusiast and will both entertain and enlighten.  Though often funny, her poetry is not to be taken lightly as most poems require a second and even third reading as new insights and subtle wordplay can shift meanings.  One is likely to learn more about oneself than about this enigmatic artist from her work but, then again, that's the power of a master wordsmith.  She will make you say "Yes," over and over throughout.  Enjoy.
1194978
Michael Heller's last two books of poetry, Wordflow (1997)and Exigent Futures (2003), are both volumes of new and selected poems, with some degree of overlap between them. So it is particularly exciting to have this collection of all new work--and what a beautiful book it is!  An austere black-and-white production from Talisman House, decorated with the abstract drawings of Heller's friend, the late sculptor Bradford Graves, Eschaton (the word, according to the OED, refers to "the divinely ordained climax of history," as in "eschatology") is a further chapter in the quest for the "difficult freedom" (to borrow from Lvinas) which for Heller constitutes poetic wisdom.  This wisdom, half-Jewish, half-Buddhist, is found in spite of oneself, as in the opening couplet of the title poem: "I don't know where spirit is, / outside or in, do I see it or not?"  It is wisdom which comes to Heller through his dedication to cultural tradition, to everyday life, and to the careful turns of language that have always made his poetry such perfectly measured work.

At all points, it is a matter of responsibility.  "One tries pulling syllables clean, like freeing / old nails from plaster" he notes in "The Chronicle Poet.  And later in the same poem: "Useless, useless!  Nothing / impedes thought's passage more than an unuttered word, / one desperately cut short or untimely enough to have become stuck / where it makes only a shameful noise..."  To avoid the stuck word, the unuttered word, Heller will take extraordinary risks.  Often eschewing lyricism almost entirely (and here he remains true to his Objectivist heritage), he seeks instead "To find words as a kind of meeting place / even as they fly loose in unresisting air" ("From the Notes").  The poem, then, is an act of community, but still a gamble, a risk that may just as well come to naught.  "How to put world there, at word-brink" he asks, "among so many lovely things that flow?" ("At Word-Brink").  It is there, in that flow, that the poet may find what he is looking for, but lose it as well.

One of Heller's most important answers to this problem is found in the title of one of the last poems in the book: "Commentary Is the Concept of Order for the Spiritual World."  Here, as in a number of other important poems in the book, Heller reasserts the principle of commentary which, through many years of sustained practice, has made him one of the most important Jewish poets of our time.  Commentary offers us "the salvaging uncertainties / in the world's  overriding syntax" (each line of this poem has a dramatic, signifying space, an emptiness in the center).  Commentary both links us to tradition and sets us off on our own.  This accounts, I think, for Heller's extraordinary grace when it comes to reference, allusion and quotation in his work.  He accepts that his poetry is a fold in a great conversation of commentary, that linguistic "meeting place" in which he posits his faith.  And it is in this humble belief, inspiring his practice, that Heller's poetry paradoxically achieves its magisterial power.
1019802
This was an amazing collection of poems by many talented, gifted poets.  A must have book to have in your collection.
4137873
An avid lover of poetry, I am so pleased to read modern day poets.  Paper Bones is a brilliant collection of poems offered from the heart of the writer.  Reading becomes being and remembering and dreaming of lost loves, days gone by, and expectations of what is to come.  I could not wait for my copy to arrive and devoured it when it did.  I will reread it on many cold and cozy winter nights.  But today, dishes remained in the dishwasher, clothes unfolded in the dryer,  flower garden left untended, and sunshine and outdoors neglected. It is almost impossible to put this collection down for mundane chores of the moment.  Read and enjoy!  Paper Bones will make the perfect gift for friends and family who, like, me embrace the talent of those like Sherry who seem to spin the dream of life with a golden tongue.
3500247
Simplicity is a great book containing many wonderful poems.  This book is for anyone to enjoy.  You don't have to be a poet or a professional author to enjoy the works of Dean Thomas Andrews.  Dean's poetry is unique in that he combines many ingredients such as emotion, life experiences, and the influences of those throughout his childhood and into his adulthood which has made him the man he is today.  I would reccomend Simplicity to fans of poety or even those who have had no experience with reading or creating their own poems.  The book is filled with a variety of poetry that anyone can enjoy or relate to.  To sum it all up, Dean Thomas Andrews exposes his heart and soul to the reader by means of pen and paper.  I found many of the poems to be touching and thought provoking.  To conclude,I highly recommend Simplicity.  Great job Dean!
819714
Anyone who wants to know about American poetry needs to read this book. Its survey is sweeping, compelling, inspiring and revealing. It is not clear that the author narrowed her selections for the most recent 50 years to stream of consciousness, or whether that is the only format Americans have written in the last 50 years. Otherwise, it is hard to put this book down, and the experience of reading this collection is extremely gratifying and rewarding.
3659921
This books drips with the author's passion and obvious conviction and drive to share his talent with the world. His unique use of verse and imagery force the reader to impose one's own life experiences thereby making the poems personal in a different way to each reader. I enjoy reading and re-reading his poems and seem to gain a little more meaning each time I do. I've never read poetry like his before. It's an experience everyone should have. I would recommend this book to everyone.