Year of Poetry- The Study Bit

So far the plan is:

• Read more poetry, read more closely, read out loud
• Write poetry or rework poetry daily (if possible) using exercises as a crutch to facilitate growth.

And so I get to part 3 which is some fairly in depth study of poetry.  I expect there to be a little cross over with part 2.  I am sure completing exercises will result in studying technique through action. But I also wanted to engage my brain from another direction.

So I will be hunting resources that are more from a crafting technical perspective.  I have some good books that I have read but not really engaged with.

These are:

A Poet's Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie.  It's very dense, in the sense that Kinzie packs it full of concepts.  I come to this book after writing poetry seriously for two years and having some success with publication.  It's the only work that I have seen that really gets down in the nuts and bolts of Free Verse, that talks about tension between sentence and line.  This book shows you as a reader and a poet how much you don't know.  It gives you the critical tools to analyse your's and other's poetry.  Not for the beginner but a must have if you are serious about poetry - Free verse or Form

Making Your Own Days by American poet Kenneth Koch.  Here's the marketing blurb:

In "Making Your Own Days, " celebrated poet Kenneth Koch writes about poetry as no one has written about it before -- and as if no one "had" written 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.

So expect there to be a bit of crossover with the last book especially and point 2.

But I'll note a reminder here to myself, that the emphasis must be on the writing.  I will have to be flexible, life being what it is and so when push comes to shove the writing of poetry must win out against all other activities.  I know what I am like and I expect that I will attempt to hide from the work when things get tough.

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The plan in posts, as it is so far:

Want to improve your poetry? Then read.

Writing to improve your poetry