Frugal Poets' Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren't a Poet

by Cynthia Gallaher

Overview

Frugal Poets’ Guide to Life is part personal journey, part life-coaching for poets (or those who’d like to live like one), part creativity guide, and part reference, with a special section on the modern history of the Chicago poetry scene, including the birth of the poetry slam. In many ways, this book is an anti-MFA guide to being a poet – or any other type of creative person. As poet Robert Frost said, “ To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” Some of Gallaher’s more personal sections of the book trace dating a well-known underground comics artist – dinner at a Denny’s restaurant with an Academy Award Best Actor -- seeing a UFO in central Wisconsin – a night when poet and men’s movement icon Robert Bly was “tarred & feathered” at a poetry reading -- play rehearsals at David Mamet’s Chicago theater featuring then-unknown actor William H. Macy – how she met her poet husband, Carlos -- reflections on Gallaher’s family relative, artist and member of the Algonquin Round Table, Neysa McMein -- visits and stays at a variety of writers’ colonies around the country -- and celebrating how friend Sandra Cisneros launched an international literary career starting with a little eight-poem chapbook at a humble bookstore in a Chicago Puerto Rican neighborhood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781483571430
Publisher:	BookBaby
Publication date:	06/13/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	280
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Cynthia Gallaher is a Chicago-based published poet with three full collections of poetry, Night Ribbons (Polar Bear Press), Swimmer’s Prayer (Missing Spoke Press) and Earth Elegance (March Abrazo Press), and two chapbooks, Private, On Purpose (Mulberry Press) and Omnivore Odes (Finishing Line Press). The Chicago Public Library lists her among its “Top 10 Requested Chicago Poets” and Today’s Chicago Woman magazine named her one of “100 Women Making a Difference.” Most recently, she became a certified yoga instructor, and is completing a new manuscript of food and medicinal herb poems, Botanical Bandwidth.

Table of Contents

Frugal introduction vii

Frugal preface xxi

Sojourn 1 What is a frugal poet and why is that cool? 1

Sojourn 2 Plying your frugal poet life skills 15

Sojourn 3 Frugal feasting 46

Sojourn 4 Frugal frippery 67

Sojourn 5 Frugal poet as happy wanderer 79

Sojourn 6 Frugal poets' guide to creativity 111

Sojourn 7 Performing poetry, producing chapbooks, attending workshops 154

Sojourn 8 A brief look at Chicago's poetry history 171

Sojourn 9 Frugal poets' bookish resources beyond Chicago 204

Sojourn 10 The frugal poet in cyberspace 248

About the Author 254