Article for Students
By CM Burroughs
I sometimes forget that not everyone knows what a poem is—what, in its physical and emotional manifestations, a poem contains. It’s perfectly fine not to have preconceived ideas about poetry—they...
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- Article for StudentsBy Rebecca HazeltonPerhaps you, like me, have had the bewildering experience of shopping for yogurt. At my local Target, an entire cold case is devoted to it: Dannon in various flavors; Stonyfield, promising cows free...
- Article for StudentsBy Rebecca HazeltonWhen we think of mastery, we think of practice, and when we think of practice, we often think of repetition. Violinists spend much of their early years running scales before their fingers automatically...
- Article for StudentsBy Rachel RichardsonCongratulations! You’ve written a poem! Now what?If you’re anything like me, after all the effort to get the words onto the page (or screen), you’re having a moment of basking in your creation. This...
- Article for StudentsBy Michael McGriffWhether you’re writing a poem for the first time in your life or working on your tenth award-winning book, starting a new poem is often an intimidating and daunting task. “What am I supposed to write...
- Article for StudentsBy Rebecca HazeltonShall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Just how is the sky like a patient etherized upon a table? If two roads diverged in a wood, why should I care?Why can’t poets just say what they mean? You’ve probably...
- Article for StudentsBy Rachel RichardsonIn order to imagine, we begin with an image. The imagination gets triggered by images and descriptions when we read, making us feel as though we are in the scene. You can think of imagery as an entryway...
- Article for StudentsBy Rebecca HazeltonIf you want to understand poetry, and maybe learn how to write it, you definitely want to learn about the different kinds of poetic lines and the uses of line breaks in poetry. The more poetry you...
- Article for StudentsBy Rachel RichardsonThe sonnet, one of the oldest, strictest, and most enduring poetic forms, comes from the Italian word sonetto, meaning “little song.” Its origins date to the thirteenth century, to the Italian court. Giacomo...
- Article for StudentsBy Hannah Brooks-MotlIt’s an old story: star-crossed lovers don’t know they’re star-crossed. They fall in love through the exchange of letters (or emails), not realizing that in real life they despise each other—until...
- Article for StudentsBy Robert PinskyEDITORS' NOTE: This essay was originally published in Singing School: Learning How to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters (W.W. Norton, 2013).Here’s another way of thinking about “body knowledge...
- Article for StudentsBy Robert PinskyEDITORS' NOTE: This essay was originally published in Singing School: Learning How to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters (W.W. Norton, 2013).There are no rules.Or, you can modify that rule...
- Article for StudentsBy The EditorsWhen you memorize a poem, it becomes a part of you forever. As Caroline Kennedy explains, “If we learn poems by heart, we will always have their wisdom to draw on, and we gain an understanding that...
- Article for StudentsBy Edward HirschCurious about poetry, but don’t know where or how to begin? We’ve reprinted the first chapter from the book How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch. Its 16 sections provide strategies for reading poems, and each...
- Article for StudentsBy Rachel RichardsonThe institution looms huge and wide the first morning I approach it, in 2002—the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson was one of the largest prisons in the U.S., with almost 6,000 inmates...
- Article for StudentsBy Becca Klaver1. “Sonnets from the Portuguese 7: The Face” by Elizabeth Barrett BrowningIf Barrett Browning sounds as though she’s claiming in this poem that love saved her life, it’s because it did. Her parents...
- Article for StudentsBy Edward HirschLyric poetry is a form of verbal materialism, an art of language, but it is much more than “the best words in the best order.” It is language fulfilling itself, language compressed and raised to ...
- Article for StudentsBy Edward HirschRobert Graves writes in On English Poetry, “Henceforward, in using the word Poetry I mean both the controlled and uncontrollable parts of the art taken together, because each is helpless without the other....
- Article for StudentsBy Edward HirschRenewal is the “pivot of lyricism,” as the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva says, comparing the lyrical element to the waves of the sea. “The wave always returns, and always returns as a different wave...
- Article for StudentsBy Edward HirschThe poem would address an unseen listener, an unseen audience. It does so through the rhetoric of address since the message in the bottle seems to be speaking to the poet alone, or to a muse, a friend...