Writing Poetry To Save Your Life: How To Find The Courage To Tell Your Stories

Writing Poetry To Save Your Life: How To Find The Courage To Tell Your Stories

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Writing Poetry To Save Your Life: How To Find The Courage To Tell Your Stories

Writing Poetry To Save Your Life: How To Find The Courage To Tell Your Stories

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Paperback(None)

$20.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Thursday, April 4
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

What I hope to accomplish in this book is to give writing prompts that will help you to get past all the outside influences that keep you from believing in yourself and in your ability to write. In order to write, you need to get rid of notions about language, poetic form, and esoteric subject matter—all the things that the poetry police have told you are essential if you are to write. I wanted to start from a different place, a place controlled by instinct rather than by intelligence. Revision, the shaping and honing of the poem, should come later, and, in revising, care always needs to be taken to retain the vitality and electricity of the poem. Anyone can learn to craft a capable poem, but it is the poems that retain that initial vitality that we remember; these are the poems that teach us how to be human.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781550717471
Publisher: Guernica Editions, Incorporated
Publication date: 04/30/2013
Series: Personal Development , #1
Edition description: None
Pages: 203
Sales rank: 320,873
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions). Her latest book is The Place I Call Home (NY Quarterly Books). Her webpage is www.mariagillan.com. She is the Director of the Creative Writing Program/The Binghamton Center for Writers, and a Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-State University of New York. In addition, she received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities from Binghamton University. Maria is the Founder and the Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She has published fifteen books of poetry, including The Weather of Old Seasons (Cross-Cultural Communications), Where I Come From, Things My Mother Told Me, Italian Women in Black Dresses, and What We Pass On: Collected Poems 1980-2009 (all by Guernica Editions).

Table of Contents

"I. Exploring the Cave Inside You: How to Find the Stories You Have to Tell
Chapter One: Finding the Poet inside You
Chapter Two: Learning to Let Go
Chapter Three: Translating Our Lives
Chapter Four: Trusting Yourself

II. Ways to Improve Your Writing
Chapter Five: Reading Poetry Aloud
Chapter Six: Keeping a Journal
Chapter Seven: Go On a Retreat
Chapter Eight: Read, Read, Read, and Read Some More
Chapter Nine: Write It Down Immediately

III. How to Make Your Writing Come Alive
Chapter Ten: Poetic Voice
Chapter Eleven: Specificity
Chapter Twelve: Don't Worry—Form Doesn't Matter
Chapter Thirteen: Simplicity
Chapter Fourteen: Poetry by Example

IV. Learning Courage
Chapter Fifteen: What Will People Say?
Chapter Sixteen: Writing What You Know
Chapter Seventeen: The Dangers of Concentrating on Publication
Chapter Eighteen: The Tough Subjects
Chapter Nineteen: Getting to the Heart
Chapter Twenty: Writing Poetry to Save Your Life
Chapter Twenty-one: The Block Method of Unblocking Writer's Block
Chapter Twenty-two: Prompts to Keep Your Writing Flowing
Chapter Fifteen: What Will People Say?
Chapter Sixteen: Writing What You Know
Chapter Seventeen: The Dangers of Concentrating on Publication
Chapter Eighteen: The Tough Subjects
Chapter Nineteen: Getting to the Heart
Chapter Twenty: Writing Poetry to Save Your Life
Chapter Twenty-one: The Block Method of Unblocking Writer's Block
Chapter Twenty-two: Prompts to Keep Your Writing Flowing"

Interviews

When I first started to consider putting together a book about writing poetry, I thought about how frightened people often are by the idea of poetry—writing it, reading it, feeling that they have anything to write about that anyone else would be interested in reading. I realized that my whole life as a poet and teacher was dedicated to giving people a feeling that their lives, that what they have to say, is important. I believe we all have stories to tell, and that those stories are the basis for writing poems that reach across the barriers of age, ethnicity, gender, social class to connect with all that is human inside us. I think of William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech in which he said: 'Writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.'

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews