Finger Exercises for Poets

by Dorianne Laux

Overview

An illuminating book of concise craft essays and exercises for poets, from Pulitzer Prize finalist and The Poet’s Companion coauthor Dorianne Laux.

From “a poet of immense insight and masterful craft” (Kwame Dawes), Finger Exercises for Poets is an engaging and inspiriting invitation to practice poetry alongside one of its masters. With wide-ranging examples from classic and contemporary poets, Dorianne Laux demystifies the magic of language that makes great poetry and offers generative exercises to harness that magic. She explores the syllable and the line, the use of form, poetic responses to contemporary events and personal experiences, the imaginative leap, and the power of a distinct voice. As she writes in the introduction, “My instrument is the immensity of language.… There are eighty-eight keys on a piano, six hundred thousand words in the English language. The patterns, sequences, and permutations of both are endless. For me, language is another kind of music.… I practice poetry. This book invites you to practice along with me.”

Throughout, Laux reminds us that poetry is a practice as much as an art and that poets must hone their language as a musician practicing an instrument.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324050667
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	98,130
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Dorianne Laux’s poetry collections include Only as the Day Is Long, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize; and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award. She is the coauthor of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. A founding faculty member of Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program, she lives in Richmond, California.

Editorial Reviews

05/13/2024

Poet Laux (Only as the Day Is Long) sets forth an edifying meditation on the craft of poetry. Each chapter highlights a literary technique used by a well-known author and provides exercises helping readers incorporate them into their own work. For instance, Laux examines how Larry Levis uses tree imagery to anchor the “discursive narrative” in his poem “Adolescence” and encourages readers to choose an image that speaks to them (“Is it a knife, is it a wheel?”) and write about it until one discovers the “metaphorical, mystical, mythical” reason it resonates. Studying how poets create meaning through contrast, Laux contends that Li-Young Lee’s “One Heart” emphasizes its final couplet by including a three-syllable word in a poem otherwise dominated by single-syllable words. To practice Lee’s technique, Laux suggests readers compose an eight-line poem exclusively from brief words, except for a single three- or four-syllable word that draws attention to the poem’s emotional crux. Other chapters on Sappho, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Kwame Dawes, among others, expound on writing political poetry, discovering “new ways of looking at everyday things,” and moving between the literal and metaphorical. Laux’s close readings of celebrated poems, most of which are reproduced in full, reveal what makes them tick, and the exercises will help get the creative juices flowing. Aspiring poets would do well to check this out. (July)

Publishers Weekly