Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing PoetryInMaking Your Own Days,celebrated poet Kenneth Koch writes about poetry as no one has written about it before -- and as if no onehadwritten about it before. Full of fresh and exciting insights and experiences, this book makes the somewhat mysterious subject of poetry clear for those who read it and for those who write it -- and for those who would like to read and write it better. Treating poetry not as a special use of language but, in fact, as a separate language -- unlike the one used in prose and conversation -- Koch is able to clarify the nature of poetic inspiration, how poems are written and revised, and what happens in a reader's mind and feelings while reading a poem.Koch also provides a rich anthology of more than ninety works: lyric poems, excerpts from long poems and poetic plays, poems in English, and poems in translation -- by poets past and present from Homer and Sappho to Lorca, Snyder, and Ashbery. Each selection is accompanied by an illuminating explanatory note designed to complement and clarify the text.In this book, Kenneth Koch's genius for making poetry clear and for bringing out its real pleasures is everywhere apparent. |
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User Review - Hebephrene - LibraryThingThis is a wonderful book and about as kind and wise a book as you could find about what it means to write poetry and why. While the book trends towards more classicism in its second half it is , as ... Read full review
Making your own days: the pleasures of reading and writing poetry
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictKoch, a preeminent American poet and author of two best-selling books on teaching poetry to children, has at last produced a guide for adults. This book is divided into two parts: a series of essays ... Read full review
Contents
A Brief Preface | 13 |
The Two Languages | 19 |
Music | 27 |
The Inclinations of the Poetry Language | 51 |
The Poetry Base | 71 |
Inspiration | 81 |
Writing | 93 |
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anthology Auden beauty bird Black Mountain blackbird blank verse blue comparisons Copyright D. H. Lawrence dawn death dream earth Elegy emotional English everything example excitement experience eyes Ezra Pound feel flower Frank O'Hara give hear heart iambic iambic pentameter idea inspiration James Schuyler John Ashbery Juliet Keats Kenneth Koch kind language of poetry Li Bai lines live long poems look lovers meaning meter Mina Loy moon never night non-metrical ordinary personification plays pleasure poet poet's poetic poetry language prose reader Reprinted by permission rhyme rhythm Rilke Romeo seems sensations sense shadow Shakespeare Shelley sleep song sonnet sound speak stanza sweet syllables T. S. Eliot talking thee things thou thought translation tree W. H. Auden walk Wallace Stevens Whitman William Carlos Williams Williams wind woman words Wordsworth writing poetry wrote Yeats Yeats's
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry A Touchstone book |
| Author | Kenneth Koch |
| Edition | reprint |
| Publisher | Simon and Schuster, 1999 |
| ISBN | 0684824388, 9780684824383 |
| Length | 317 pages |
| Subjects | › › Language Arts & Disciplines / Reading Skills Language Arts & Disciplines / Writing / General Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / Books & Reading Literary Criticism / Comparative Literature Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / Anthologies (multiple authors) |
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