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The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach
A distinctive collection of more than 90 effective poetry-writing exercises combined with corresponding essays to inspire writers of all levels.
299 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
May 15, 2012
I was exposed to this work in an experimental poetry class taught by Carolyn Forche. Remains one of the only writing texts I can tolerate. I adapt these exercises for prose, and they work wonderfully.
May 17, 2010
Part of me wants to hate on writing-by-formula, but I like this book a lot and was interested in a lot of the exercises. It's a good read on its own, even if you don't intend to use any of the prompts. After each prompt, the author explains why s/he finds these particular constraints valuable. I liked Agha Shahid Ali's reflections on the ghazal especially.
Also, most of the authors qualify their prompts as ways of making discoveries, not keys to creating perfect poems on the spot. Plus, the last section on revision sort of grounds all the creative hullabaloo of the previous chapters. Lynn Emanuel's essay is especially sobering and good.
Also, most of the authors qualify their prompts as ways of making discoveries, not keys to creating perfect poems on the spot. Plus, the last section on revision sort of grounds all the creative hullabaloo of the previous chapters. Lynn Emanuel's essay is especially sobering and good.
May 28, 2022
This book is full of excellent poetry exercises that can be used for practice or as prompts to get the creative engine purring. With these exercise manuals, you sometimes think, You've seen one, you've seen them all, but you haven't seen what'sin this one. The editors Behn and Twichell compiled these exercises from experts in the education of poetry, and it shows. Clever, creative, and expanding, you are bound to find exercises in this ageless volume that will challenge and develop your poetic mind. Recommended for poets at every level!
September 20, 2018
Much of my reading this period has been that of actual poetry. From this beginning introduction to the reach and range of voice in poems I have entered a boundary-less and fantastical world. A world of structure, no structure, metaphor, rhythm, sometimes rhyme, line lengths, space, beginnings, and endings. Reading the work of other poets has been an education for me in the unlimited possibilities in the use of language.
I have also consumed books on the meaning of poetry, the place of poetry in time and culture, the evolution of styles, poetry as a digital entity, and various views on what is and is not a poem. These often set foot into the realm of theory, of strict definition, of world views as technical or humanist. I found C.P. Snow’s premise of there being two basic cultures, one technical/rational, the other humanist/emotional, fascinating. His placement of poetry in the technical/rational camp was a surprise to me (more on this later in the semester). I have read about what poetry ‘should’ consist of and about the eternal vitality and power of words.
What made The Making of a Poem stand out for me was its insistent assertion that poetry itself, requires formal practice. The authors hold firm their assertion that while talent is a basic requirement for a poet, “curiosity, determination, and the willingness to learn from others” (p. xi) must also be cultivated. They present a book which offers exercise after exercise for the poet to develop both a practice and a voice for their work.
Behn and Twitchell divided their book into seven sections. Each section delineated a specific theme and within the sections are exercises and reflections on meaning. The authors state that “Poetry, like any art, required practice.” They go on to say that:
Good exercises are provocative, challenging, and often entertaining. A good exercise will engage you on at least several levels, and should necessitate the breaking of new ground. (p. xiii)
I initially approached their premise with moderate skepticism, reading into the title a “Poetry for Dummies” approach to the art. I was dubious of the value of a trial and error, cookbook approach to writing a poem. My exalted view of poetry excluded any interest in considering banal exercises as a necessary component of being a poet. Yet this book consists of exercise after exercise created by a range of respected poets who have used variants of these in their teaching of poetry. As Behn and Twichell clearly state in their introduction:
The aspiring poet must apprentice him or herself, must master the elements of language, the complexities of form and its relation to subject, the feel of the line, the image, the play of sound, that makes it possible to respond in a voice with subtlety and range where he hears music in his inner ear, or she sees in the world that image that’s the spark of a poem (p. xi).
The sections of the book are grouped based on the area of inquiry, as opposed to level of poetic expertise. This approach enables poets at any level of experience to pick and choose their own level of interest and/or difficulty. I found Part 1 “Ladders to the Dark” to be very useful in its approaches and prompts to just getting ink to page. Other sections consisted of attention to objects, aspects of voice, making use of the intuitive and the non-rational mind, structural possibilities, experimentation with rhyme, lineation, and rhythm, and finally, Part 7 “Major and Minor Surgery.”
Entering into the spirit of the book, I began to leaf through its many exercises and try them out for myself. The remainder of this paper will focus on some examples I worked on and my assessment of the ‘practice’ of poetry writing.
Part 1 “Ladders to the Dark,” focuses on the importance of mining the unconscious for material. Rita Dove offers “the ten-minute spill” where the writer creates a 10-line poem which must include a proverb or adage, and use 5 of the 8 words she supplies for the student (cliff, needle, voice, whir, blackberry, cloud, mother, lick).
To know one
It takes one
Mother
Hanging on a cliff
The needle whir of cloud voices
Urgent
Compelling me
To be one
To hide one
To find one
In Part 2, “The Things of the World,” attention is focused on the object itself. How to approach the object, personify (or not) it, how to make it concrete or illusive, strange or familiar. One exercise here was to write a poem that is merely a list of things:
One quail in a bevy of quails
One swan in a lamentation of swans
One kangaroo in a troop of kangaroos
One strumpet in a fanfare of strumpets
One patient in a virtue of patients
A bloat of hippotami
A fluther of jellyfish
An exhaltation of larks
Out of these, the world is born.
Another exercise was to remember a person you know well and describe the person’s hands. Here the object was to explore unique ways to view a common thing or experience which gives a sense of character to that thing.
Utile and strong
Digits not yet frozen by arthritis
Skin not yet spotted by age
Veins, pronounced
Knuckles, tidy
Hands like breathing tokens of kindness and milk
While these exercises may seem elementary, they are not easy. Whether the poem is to tell a story, contain a feeling, or describe a mundane object, I realized that thought, syntax, adjectives, and nouns required care and then more care. To have the poem breathe, the words need to resonate and sentences/lines must convey and aspect or feeling of a life. These exercises prompt the exploration of language and sound, thinking about metaphor and repetition. The exercises further create food for thought and for writing especially on days when creativity is skulking on one of Dante’s grim paths.
Other exercises in this book included trying out different ‘types’ of poems. Part 6, “Laws of the Wild,” emphasized structure, shape, and organization of the poem. I tried writing a villanelle which was a complicated and frustrating task. I found it very difficult to fit words to line numbers, rhyme pattern, and repetition. I wonder why Dylan Thomas chose this form.
I have also consumed books on the meaning of poetry, the place of poetry in time and culture, the evolution of styles, poetry as a digital entity, and various views on what is and is not a poem. These often set foot into the realm of theory, of strict definition, of world views as technical or humanist. I found C.P. Snow’s premise of there being two basic cultures, one technical/rational, the other humanist/emotional, fascinating. His placement of poetry in the technical/rational camp was a surprise to me (more on this later in the semester). I have read about what poetry ‘should’ consist of and about the eternal vitality and power of words.
What made The Making of a Poem stand out for me was its insistent assertion that poetry itself, requires formal practice. The authors hold firm their assertion that while talent is a basic requirement for a poet, “curiosity, determination, and the willingness to learn from others” (p. xi) must also be cultivated. They present a book which offers exercise after exercise for the poet to develop both a practice and a voice for their work.
Behn and Twitchell divided their book into seven sections. Each section delineated a specific theme and within the sections are exercises and reflections on meaning. The authors state that “Poetry, like any art, required practice.” They go on to say that:
Good exercises are provocative, challenging, and often entertaining. A good exercise will engage you on at least several levels, and should necessitate the breaking of new ground. (p. xiii)
I initially approached their premise with moderate skepticism, reading into the title a “Poetry for Dummies” approach to the art. I was dubious of the value of a trial and error, cookbook approach to writing a poem. My exalted view of poetry excluded any interest in considering banal exercises as a necessary component of being a poet. Yet this book consists of exercise after exercise created by a range of respected poets who have used variants of these in their teaching of poetry. As Behn and Twichell clearly state in their introduction:
The aspiring poet must apprentice him or herself, must master the elements of language, the complexities of form and its relation to subject, the feel of the line, the image, the play of sound, that makes it possible to respond in a voice with subtlety and range where he hears music in his inner ear, or she sees in the world that image that’s the spark of a poem (p. xi).
The sections of the book are grouped based on the area of inquiry, as opposed to level of poetic expertise. This approach enables poets at any level of experience to pick and choose their own level of interest and/or difficulty. I found Part 1 “Ladders to the Dark” to be very useful in its approaches and prompts to just getting ink to page. Other sections consisted of attention to objects, aspects of voice, making use of the intuitive and the non-rational mind, structural possibilities, experimentation with rhyme, lineation, and rhythm, and finally, Part 7 “Major and Minor Surgery.”
Entering into the spirit of the book, I began to leaf through its many exercises and try them out for myself. The remainder of this paper will focus on some examples I worked on and my assessment of the ‘practice’ of poetry writing.
Part 1 “Ladders to the Dark,” focuses on the importance of mining the unconscious for material. Rita Dove offers “the ten-minute spill” where the writer creates a 10-line poem which must include a proverb or adage, and use 5 of the 8 words she supplies for the student (cliff, needle, voice, whir, blackberry, cloud, mother, lick).
To know one
It takes one
Mother
Hanging on a cliff
The needle whir of cloud voices
Urgent
Compelling me
To be one
To hide one
To find one
In Part 2, “The Things of the World,” attention is focused on the object itself. How to approach the object, personify (or not) it, how to make it concrete or illusive, strange or familiar. One exercise here was to write a poem that is merely a list of things:
One quail in a bevy of quails
One swan in a lamentation of swans
One kangaroo in a troop of kangaroos
One strumpet in a fanfare of strumpets
One patient in a virtue of patients
A bloat of hippotami
A fluther of jellyfish
An exhaltation of larks
Out of these, the world is born.
Another exercise was to remember a person you know well and describe the person’s hands. Here the object was to explore unique ways to view a common thing or experience which gives a sense of character to that thing.
Utile and strong
Digits not yet frozen by arthritis
Skin not yet spotted by age
Veins, pronounced
Knuckles, tidy
Hands like breathing tokens of kindness and milk
While these exercises may seem elementary, they are not easy. Whether the poem is to tell a story, contain a feeling, or describe a mundane object, I realized that thought, syntax, adjectives, and nouns required care and then more care. To have the poem breathe, the words need to resonate and sentences/lines must convey and aspect or feeling of a life. These exercises prompt the exploration of language and sound, thinking about metaphor and repetition. The exercises further create food for thought and for writing especially on days when creativity is skulking on one of Dante’s grim paths.
Other exercises in this book included trying out different ‘types’ of poems. Part 6, “Laws of the Wild,” emphasized structure, shape, and organization of the poem. I tried writing a villanelle which was a complicated and frustrating task. I found it very difficult to fit words to line numbers, rhyme pattern, and repetition. I wonder why Dylan Thomas chose this form.
August 11, 2024
a classic, lots of fun exercises to inspire you when you’re stuck
July 31, 2021
Very good read. Exactly what I expected and exactly what I wanted. Further defined on my thoughts and goals with writing exercises and I've already roped several friends into doing them with me. Some are insane and I will never do them, but some offered an invaluable insight on what you can accomplish when you focus on one technical goal to the extreme. I typed up a one sentence summary of each and printed them out to pull from a hat. This will supply me for several years. It was great to hear from so many different teaching voices on what they recommend to help you advance and/or round out your skills. The open-endedness of the prompts lets you apply many of these to more than poetry as well.
June 24, 2022
Nothing can be better than over a hundred instructor tested poetry activities actually used in the classroom. Broken into sections for easy reference each activity is explained how it was used by the individual instructor in the classroom. Many of the activities are presented with examples that are instructor and novice friendly. With the categories its easy for an instructor to pull an activity to teach within a poetry lesion. Some focus on meter, rhythm, metaphor, writers block, found poems, and free verse. A final section deals with breaking through writer’s block and working through revision techniques. Overall, there are activated for all level of poets and professors to not only improve craft and but classroom instruction.
October 6, 2017
I would like to see more examples of finished poems. Explaining how to write it is often not enough. A finished model, after explanation would be helpful.
August 6, 2024
highlighted and annotated a lot. have already used one exercise as a jumping off point with a friend. will visit this often
September 8, 2013
Well, never say never! I'm moving this book to my to-read, read-again-later shelves. It's still on my real desktop, but I feel an increasing lack of closure seeing it on my currently-reading shelf every time I open my virtual desktop. I do read it off and on but not all the time! There's no shelf that exactly fits this book's category. Yet it's still a 5-Star winner, but more a reference than a read-start-to-finish book.
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This is a fantastic book of writing prompts. A virtual friend of mine (a real poet) from a writing course I took last year recommended it on her blog: http://mollyspencer.wordpress.com/. Not only are Molly's book recommendations wonderful so are her blog and poetry.
But I digress. What I started to write was I'll probably never move this book to my "read" shelf. With a resource like this, the point is not to finish, but to incorporate the authors' suggestions into my own writing and to work randomly through the different exercises. I may even repeat some of them. So I guess The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach will remain on my "currently-reading" shelf for a long time.
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This is a fantastic book of writing prompts. A virtual friend of mine (a real poet) from a writing course I took last year recommended it on her blog: http://mollyspencer.wordpress.com/. Not only are Molly's book recommendations wonderful so are her blog and poetry.
But I digress. What I started to write was I'll probably never move this book to my "read" shelf. With a resource like this, the point is not to finish, but to incorporate the authors' suggestions into my own writing and to work randomly through the different exercises. I may even repeat some of them. So I guess The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach will remain on my "currently-reading" shelf for a long time.
May 6, 2016
An excellent collection of essays on writing poetry. I wish I had it when I taught my poetry writing class.
June 10, 2019
I found the exercises very helpful and they generated new ideas for my passion of writing poetry.
Read
November 3, 2024Intro says to use like a cookbook. I've enjoyed a few great recipes and admired others I know I will never make.
March 2, 2008
The Practice of Poetry is a book that you (sometimes as an individual, sometimes in a group) do, more than a book you read. It doesn't have a lot of data on the technical aspects of poetry (rhyme, meter, style, etc.) It also doesn't address the various schools and movements of poetry. It has a lot of exercises on various aspects of poetry (mining the unconscious, writing in images and metaphors, what voice is being used, the use/misuse of strangeness, poetic structure, the poetry/music connection, and rewriting).
I would have liked to see some of the poetry of the contributors to see if I wanted to investigate them further. There is plenty of empty space where that could be done.
As this book was published in 1992, the comment by contributor Agha Shahid Ali that ghazals are an unfamiliar form in American poetry is no longer true, as Robert Bly used them in his books "The Night Abraham Called To The Stars" and "My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy." Many of the poems referenced are now available on the internet, so the references as to where to obtain the poems mentioned in the book, and the poems of the contributors, are dated. It would be great if there was a new edition of this book.
But the exercises are time-independent, and if you do them, your poetry will most likely improve.
I would have liked to see some of the poetry of the contributors to see if I wanted to investigate them further. There is plenty of empty space where that could be done.
As this book was published in 1992, the comment by contributor Agha Shahid Ali that ghazals are an unfamiliar form in American poetry is no longer true, as Robert Bly used them in his books "The Night Abraham Called To The Stars" and "My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy." Many of the poems referenced are now available on the internet, so the references as to where to obtain the poems mentioned in the book, and the poems of the contributors, are dated. It would be great if there was a new edition of this book.
But the exercises are time-independent, and if you do them, your poetry will most likely improve.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 10, 2021
Overall, this book has been extremely helpful in prompting me to continue writing. So many new poems have been born in my mind from the exercises within The Practice of Poetry. This book is especially good as a quick reference when a writer is experiencing “writer’s block” or is just missing inspiration. Simply pick up the book and flip to any page to find an exercise which will give you a place to start.
July 31, 2011
As a soon-to-be Intro to Poetry Writing instructor, this is a great touchstone. Can't wait to experiment on my fledgling-guinea-pig-poet-undergrad-beasties. If I don't directly use these exercises, I'm sure to indirectly use them. Best part of the book for me were the explanations of the exercises.
April 27, 2015
This book has found a permanent place in my life. The exercises in it have inspired about half of the poems I have written since I bought it. Every time I pick it up, it is like attending a poetry seminar held just for me.
January 2, 2017
Whether I do an exercise from this book by myself or with a writing group, I always end up with something interesting and unexpected. A unique collection offering wide interpretations and great ideas.
June 1, 2017
There are some great exercises in here. Very inspiring! Even with the ones I didn't think much of, my classmates would come up with something intriguing or brilliant that changed how I thought about the exercise. I'm definitely keeping this book to refer back to.
March 18, 2008
This is a good reference book for poets.
February 3, 2018
Good selection of exercises. More aimed at teachers than at writers, but it sparked some productive writing sessions.
November 12, 2008
A great resource for writing exercises, prompts, ideas, and encouragement.
July 25, 2016
They have some pretty good writing prompts for poetry :)
July 16, 2021
For a lot of people, poetry is something you write as therapy, or as a form of confession, to unburden oneself and to heal. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, as it beats the more widely held perception of poetry as a waste of time.
But anyone wanting to get serious about poetry as a craft rather than solely a means of self-expression is quickly going to discover that writing a poem can require as much thought, effort, and concentration as solving a complex math problem. Learning about the various forms in detail-the villanelle, the sonnet, the sestina-starts to give one a greater appreciation for the masters of the form.
"The Practice of Poetry" contains an embarrassment of helpful exercises, anecdotes, and excerpts of poems from some of the most knowledgeable practitioners and teachers of the craft. Consumed slowly and earnestly over a long period of time (I tried one exercise per day over the course of several months) it functions as it's own sort of mini-workshop. In addition to the exercises, there are fascinating detours along the way. There are some explanations of the various schools of poetry and the squabbles among them, like the adherents of formalism versus those who write in blank verse (think Robert Frost v. Charles Bukowski), as well as examination of concepts to help the neophyte writer avoid various clichés and pitfalls that show up occasionally in the poems of even the most practiced experts.
It's as near-ideal as you could get, unless you have twenty grand and feel like spending a few months barefoot at a retreat in Colorado or California. And who wants to do that, jockeying for the attention of some poet laureate with ten or twenty other MFA students, plotting during meditative retreat on how you're going to elbow everyone else out of the way and get that big grant money for yourself? ...Or maybe the world of the manqué poet trying to bloom into the genuine article isn't so cutthroat.
Highest recommendation in any case, for everyone from high-school students just starting out to those who want to devote their life to (the attempt at) crafting the perfect poem.
But anyone wanting to get serious about poetry as a craft rather than solely a means of self-expression is quickly going to discover that writing a poem can require as much thought, effort, and concentration as solving a complex math problem. Learning about the various forms in detail-the villanelle, the sonnet, the sestina-starts to give one a greater appreciation for the masters of the form.
"The Practice of Poetry" contains an embarrassment of helpful exercises, anecdotes, and excerpts of poems from some of the most knowledgeable practitioners and teachers of the craft. Consumed slowly and earnestly over a long period of time (I tried one exercise per day over the course of several months) it functions as it's own sort of mini-workshop. In addition to the exercises, there are fascinating detours along the way. There are some explanations of the various schools of poetry and the squabbles among them, like the adherents of formalism versus those who write in blank verse (think Robert Frost v. Charles Bukowski), as well as examination of concepts to help the neophyte writer avoid various clichés and pitfalls that show up occasionally in the poems of even the most practiced experts.
It's as near-ideal as you could get, unless you have twenty grand and feel like spending a few months barefoot at a retreat in Colorado or California. And who wants to do that, jockeying for the attention of some poet laureate with ten or twenty other MFA students, plotting during meditative retreat on how you're going to elbow everyone else out of the way and get that big grant money for yourself? ...Or maybe the world of the manqué poet trying to bloom into the genuine article isn't so cutthroat.
Highest recommendation in any case, for everyone from high-school students just starting out to those who want to devote their life to (the attempt at) crafting the perfect poem.
November 6, 2025
There are some genuinely intriguing exercises in this book, ranging from very simple to more elaborate. Some of them go too far into the ridiculous and impractical (spend two weeks doing these extremely specific assignments, none of which sound that interesting), but most have a good balance of parameters and open-endedness that sparks ideas and helps them grow without becoming so rigid there's no room for creativity or interpretation.
I certainly didn't do every exercise in the book, but I tried the ones that interested me, and there are more I'll probably try in the future.
I certainly didn't do every exercise in the book, but I tried the ones that interested me, and there are more I'll probably try in the future.
January 31, 2018
A great concept, with many different people submitting writing exercises on everything from facing the blank page to revising an existing poem. I didn't find myself getting particularly excited about very many of them, and I often felt things were more subconscious than I'd like, though I suppose that's okay at some level of just needing to learn and practice. But I took away a few ideas I might try.
March 24, 2020
A collection of more than ninety exercises and essays from writing teachers, containing both imaginative ways to kick off the writing process, along with lessons on the technicalities of writing poetry. Some of the chapters work better than others, but overall a good starting point.
April 24, 2021
This is a great book of prompts and exercises, including some form poem basics and some advice about revision. A good book to have in your toolbox whether you are a teacher, aspiring poet, or advanced writer.
June 23, 2021
Lots of good advice
As a practicing or novice poet there are a lot of good ideas to stretch your writing muscles. Many different ways of looking. A slight criticism, the poem examples are mostly from based in the US.
As a practicing or novice poet there are a lot of good ideas to stretch your writing muscles. Many different ways of looking. A slight criticism, the poem examples are mostly from based in the US.
April 21, 2024
This book is a compilation of suggestions for practice in the art of poetry. It's for anyone interested in writing poetry, whether alone or in a class. We want to give you the chance to benefit from the knowledge and insight of a wide range of poets who are also teachers of poetry.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews