Product Description: The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg reveals in fascinating detail the man and the artist through the eyes of a Ginsberg intimate—a fellow poet and admirer, a man who shares the ecumenical outlook and resolute social conscience of one our century's most popular and controversial literary figures...read more

Product Description: On Poetry: A Rapsody is one of Jonathan Swift’s most complex and controversial poems. This study presents, for the first time, a detailed analysis and interpretation of what, on a surface level, has to be called a mock ars poetica, but which, on a deeper level, is a highly allusive political satire...read more

Product Description: The centuries have changed little in this art, The subjects are still the same.—Kenneth RexrothWhy poetry? What is poetry and why do people write it and read it? Why, as Dana Levin has written, "this urge to making a scrapbook of stars"?Every poet, by accident or design, has responded to "Why poetry" by writing a poem about poetry (an ars poetica)...read more

The Straight Line brings together memoir, informal talks, autobiographical essays, unconventional book reviews, instructional pieces, imaginative speculations on the nature of reading, and poems about writing. What distinguishes these pieces is Ron Padgett's refreshing sense of humor and the changing, unexpected angles on his point of view. He pokes fun at the concept of "finding one's poetic voice," has a dream conversation with a Russian poet, talks to his typewriter, parodies Robert Frost, deconstructs the haiku, finds weird word lists in the dictionary, and extols the pleasures of mistakes in writing.But along with the playful wit comes Padgett's serious fascination with how words work. Essays discuss such subjects as the otherness of languages; French poets and their relationship to Cubist painters; an afternoon with the poet Edwin Denby; a tribute to Ted Berrigan; twentieth-century modernism; and suggestions for using the computer to write poetry.The book concludes with pieces that Padgett has written during his thirty years as a teacher of poetry. Essays explore the unexpected relationships between poetry and dance; the practical value of using "gimmicks" to inspire poetry writing; and some radical and entertaining ideas for innovative ways to read creatively.Ron Padgett is Publications Director, Teachers and Writers Collaborative. His books include Albanian Diary, Creative Reading, and Old Faithful: 18 Writers Present Their Favorite Writing Assignments. (view table of contents)

An unsparing portrait of the man who led the 'Beat Generation' writers across four decades focuses on his role as a leader of the literary and cultural movement that shaped the American consciousness and is written in the form of an epic poem.

Product Description: A lifetime of memories, a lifetime of writing, a lifetime of publishing (since 1936) - what to do, how to say it, what is the organic form? If you are James Laughlin, founder and publisher of New Directions, poet and friend of poets, you adapt the narrative metric of one friend (Kenneth Rexoth) to tell the very personal stories of your other friends with verve, compassion, and a shrewd eye to the emotional truth of complex relationships...read more

Product Description: A poem is a moral and mythic construct. Each decision the writer makes concerning the subject matter, form, diction, and tone reveals something about his or her vision of the world. Nowhere is that vision more on display than in an ars poetica, which is where a poet takes stock, writing down his or her articles of faith...read more

Product Description: Fourteen prose poems in the voices of the major and minor figures of the Romantic Movement of the 19th century.

An anthology of poems celebrates poetry and features the work of Eleanor Farjeon, Karla Kuskin, Eve Merriam, Lilian Moore, Jack Prelutsky, Nikki Giovanni, and others.

Book by Matthias, John

Product Description: `Goodbye to the Art of Poetry' is the text of Peter Levi's valedictory lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry. Unlike his inaugural lecture `The Lamentation of the Dead', it is written in verse - in the couplets which he first used for a series of sermons in the sixties...read more