The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets

by Ted Kooser

"No other poet seems better suited to represent the United States as its Laureate in this era than Ted Kooser, and The Poetry Home Repair Manual should enhance his grip on our slumbering Republic." —Larry Woiwode, Poet Laureate of North Dakota, in North Dakota Quarterly Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend—a friend who is willing to share everything he’s learned about the art he’s spent a lifetime learning to execute so well. Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual , Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets—aspiring or practicing—can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry’s ultimate to reach other people and touch their hearts.

Genres: Poetry, Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, How To, School, Crafts

170 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Ted Kooser lives in rural Nebraska with his wife, Kathleen, and three dogs. He is one of America's most noted poets, having served two terms as U. S. Poet Laureate and, during the second term, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection, Delights & Shadows. He is a retired life insurance executive who now teaches part-time at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. The school board in Lincoln, Nebraska, recently opened Ted Kooser Elementary School, which Ted says is his greatest honor, among many awards and distinctions. He has published twelve collections of poetry and three nonfiction books. Two of the latter are books on writing, The Poetry Home Repair Manual and Writing Brave and Free, and a memoir, Lights on a Ground of Darkness (all from University of Nebraska Press. Bag in the Wind from Candlewick is his first children's book, with which he is delighted. "It's wonderful," Ted said, "to be writing for young people. I am reinventing myself at age 70."

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple months ago I was struck with an urge to read, write, and enjoy poetry. It was a convergence, I'm sure, of a variety of outside influences. I'd heard, for example, that writing poetry could infuse a person with almost magical writing power. Likewise, that reading it could open one's third eye and allow the seeing of truths, telepathic conversations with John Keats, psychokinesis, telekineses, force lightning, and mindsex.

So I said, "why not?" and set about writing one poem every day (along with a small illustration to accompany it. As of today, I'm at number 45). I figured I would eventually understand poetry through this deliberate practice.

Unfortunately, while I did enjoy doing it as a form of regular recreational writing, it quickly became apparent that I wasn't going to get anywhere until I had a bit more guidance.

A quick Amazon search turned up a bunch of titles. The Poetry Home Repair Manual? Hilarious! And it's written by a real United States Poet Laureate? Exactly what I was looking for.

I've been reading this a few pages at a time for the last month. I would just pick it up whenever I have a minute or two to kill and read a couple pages. Or a single example poem. The book worked really well in these little spurts and the long absorption rate allowed me to really digest each point before moving on to the next.

As a rank beginner (not only of writing poems - but also of reading them), I learned a very large amount from this book. I would have learned a lot from any poetry book, but I'm really glad I started with this one.

I found Kooser's style of guidance to be completely unintimidating. At the same time, he does not mince words. For a jovial looking Midwesterner with a sweater and coffee mug and a grin in his dust jacket photo, he is surprisingly candid with his opinions about what makes a good poem and also where serious academic types can stick it!

I bet being a poet laureate is like being Batman. When someone from the intellectual elite takes issue with your opinion and asks, "and who, exactly, are you?" you can reply, "I was the Poet Laureate Consultant to the Goddamn Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006. Ha ha!" and then throw a sleeping gas capsule into the group and write limericks on their unconscious foreheads.

I think the most important thing that I personally took from the very many pieces of advice in this short book was the idea that a poem should make sense to its reader.

You can be certain that after I'd absorbed that idea, I looked in horror upon my nascent creations. Oh dear, I was aping the very same opaque, confusing word-puzzle style I hated to read! What was I thinking? I was hinting at things as obliquely as possibly, using unusual words for their own sake, and generally crafting confusing, snobby pieces of crap.

In my defense, I thought that's what poetry was. Just crack open this month's Atlantic or this week's New Yorker. The contemporary poetry I most often encounter in the wild is just absolutely...impenetrable. If you're like me and didn't major in English Literature, you're probably in the same boat. And you might be wondering if you're missing out on something.

Well, that's when I realized that the poems I did like - some even to the point of memorizing them weren't the sort of things they publish in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Certainly not! The ones I tend to like are the clear and concise kinds of things I learned as a child. Or song lyrics. You know, they sound fun; they even, gasp, rhyme!

There are some examples of good, clear poems in this book. I can honestly say I liked some of them. Really, truly, liked.

I also gained some other really important guidance. In no particular order, a poem: should be able to speak for itself and be enjoyed without you having to explain to the reader; may use emotion, but it is wise to avoid gushing; can paint a much more believable picture in the mind's eye if it contains a few unexpected specific details; should fit its form - line breaks shouldn't feel arbitrary, rhymes shouldn't feel forced; should use a simile or metaphor carefully - and not one when the other would be better.

For me, the most easily applied and immediately effective advice in the book was: including unexpected detail. He gives great examples of expected detail and contrasts these with poems that use unexpected detail. I can't remember his examples, but imagine a description of a bakery that went, "it smelled of warm, inviting bread," versus one that went, "the freshly-baked bread sat under a heat lamp shaped like an enormous human foot." The difference is amazing: the poems with unexpected detail feel so much more real than those with bland and typical expected descriptions in them. It's truly a difference of night and day.

This is one of those books that will likely reward re-readings at a later date. I'm certain I'll get as much new advice out of it after a year of reading and writing poetry as I did after only a couple weeks.

Tags: poetry, poets laureate, metaphors, similes, ham cubes, mindsex

[rahul · Rating 5 out of 5]

More from the book..

Let's say a head weighs so much because it may contain, among thousands of other images, the Grand Canyon or the rolling sea off Cape Hatteras. Tons of colorful stone, or slate-gray crashing water.
Think how much just those two vistas weigh, complete with the heavy tourist traffic, thousands of screaming gulls, and the frightened look your little daughter had on her face when they brought her first lobster and set it before her, claws and all. The big bang theory of the origin of the universe posits that everything came from a single, extremely dense speck. Everything was packed in there. This is just the way the brain is, and everything you know is stuffed inside.

Walt Whitman said he contained multitudes, and he certainly put a lot of what he contained into Leaves of Grass. But he must have left out a lot. There are just so many things you can fit into a poem, even into a great book of poems like Leaves of Grass.




------------------------------------------------------
An excerpt...

Poetry is a lot more important than poets.

TOO MANY POETS?

A noted contemporary poet and critic has said we ought to keep poetry a secret from the masses. Another, the editor of a prestigious anthology of poetry, said that each nation ought to have no more than a handful of poets. Both sound pretty elitist, don't they? Well, we'll always have among us those who think the best should be reserved for the few. Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there's a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you're writing your poem, there's one less scoundrel in the world. And I'd like a world, wouldn't you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I'm certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don't think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say
"We loved the earth but could not stay."

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ted Kooser is a nice man. I knew from the minute I saw his photo on the back cover- an avuncular figure in a cable-knit sweater smiling blithely into the camera, a mug of something in his hand- that this would not be elitist, it would not be condescending and it would not be highflown. 

This is a book for the intimidated and the uncertain, for the simple and the popular. There are the sorts of people who like poetry as poetry; not because it seems like they ought to like it, or because it fits into the image that  goatees, berets and French cigarettes are trying to project, but because they like the sounds of words, and the color of mental images and the chance to say what they are thinking and feeling, and that other chance (so much more slight) to toss their poems out into the open world to see if they might take up a home with Someone Else. It is this sort of person that poetry thrives on, and it is this sort of person that Ted Kooser is writing to. 

He is not into the tortured-artist scene. Kooser has fun writing poems, and he suspects that a lot of other people will too. To that end, he begins with the basics- what a poet is anyway, the myth that you are going to get very famous and very rich doing this- and once he's got that out of the way he deals with the actual cement and screws of poetry: how to listen to a poem, to get a feel for the rise and fall of rhythm.

But he simply puts the tools in your hand. This is the wrong place to look for an adoring analysis of the sonnet form- or any other form. 34 pages in, he tells you not to worry about the rules. And that is the essence of the book, that informs a lot of Kooser's own writing, and that might be the biggest lesson I took away from this little book. The rules of the poem ought never to get in the way of what the poem is meant to say. The audience (the all-important audience) isn't counting up your lines to see if you've constructed a proper sonnet; they are interested in what the poem says. 

The rest of the book is dedicated to the source material for poems : memory, feeling- but again there is the reminder: "What does your poem say?" There are simple lessons in consistency of metaphor and image (much of which I found very helpful in tinkering with my current batch of poems), all designed to clarify your communication with the reader.

This book offers up simple lessons, easily gotten elsewhere. But no less valuable for that. Any reluctant beginner would be happy for the encouragement. Any accomplished poet has probably already mastered these lessons, but the reminder is nice, especially coming from so genial a source. For those of us somewhere in the middle, Ted Kooser is an inspiration as well as an anchor. He frees us to write, while reminding us that it isn't only ourselves for whom we write.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim little treatise offers some of the most practical, applicable advice on writing that I've come across yet. Kooser puts less emphasis on technical aspects of form and rhythm in favor of solid poetry that's written to be read, pointing out that the music is a less conscious process. It's friendly and encouraging - I found myself nodding in recognition of mistakes I make, proud to see things I already work on, and reaching for the highlighter often.

[Mary Soon Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read quite a few books about writing, some of them very good, from the concise wisdom of Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" to the brilliance of Le Guin's "The Language of the Night." But I'd never read a book specifically about the craft of writing poetry until this one. I found it excellent: knowledgeable, helpful, gently delivered, often witty.

For instance, chapter one talks about being a poet, and, four pages in, Kooser says, "It didn't occur to me for a long time that in order to earn the title of Poet, I ought to have written at least one poem." That's a sentence that made me smile, one that I repeated to my family. But a few paragraphs on he says, "Poetry is a lot more important than poets." Throughout the book, Kooser emphasizes the importance of the reader in the poetry equation. I love his insistence that poetry should be accessible and rewarding.

In order for poets to achieve this, Kooser offers advice on writing and revising poems. This advice covers topics such as voice, rhyme, transparency, the use of detail, metaphors and similes. The book's tagline says "Practical Advice for Beginning Poets." It's no doubt sound advice for beginning poets, but I think is also very useful for not-so-new poets. At least, I found it alarmingly insightful. Alarming because I've been writing poetry for years, and am now, belatedly, more aware of my deficiencies.

One warning: this book may lead you to covet another dozen books. Kooser includes work by many poets to illustrate his points, and I kept being tempted to add their collections to my to-read list.

Overall: excellent. I wish I'd read this long ago! 5 out of 5 better-late-than-never stars.

Addendum: my thanks to Timons Esaias for suggesting this book.

About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).

[Sian Griffiths · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was highly recommended to me, but I have to say, I found it disappointing. The definition of poetry is extremely limited and limiting, and the advice for writing poetry is thus limited by that narrow definition.

I've been debating with myself whether these limits are helpful to new writers (why overwhelm? why confuse?), but I just can't believe the narrowness is necessary. I've been reading Bob Hicok's WORDS FOR EMPTY AND WORDS FOR FULL alongside this one, and Hicok's book is staggering me with its beauty, insight, wit, and intelligence, and yet it's far outside the examples/definition of poetry that Kooser provides. And so is Terrence Hayes and Maggie Nelson and so much of contemporary poetry. It's not that Kooser's sampling is poor. Many of the included poems are beautiful. But they are much of a muchness... mostly white writers, mostly lyric and with a lyric "I," mostly engaged with the natural world. Good stuff, but only one kind of stuff. Poetry is bigger than this definition.

Beyond that, the advice on how to send work out for publication strikes me as painfully dated, even for 2005. (Advising against simultaneous submission? Really? And suggesting that if a poem receives 3-4 rejections, that it is seriously flawed? Maybe those are the standards for Pulitzer Prize winners, but for normal mortals, the standards must be lower.) Hopefully, new writers are looking at other sources of advice.

All in all, some good basic wisdom, but much in need of supplementation and, for my taste, too over-simplified on the whole.

[Samir Rawas Sarayji · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really frank, personal and no-nonsense book with solid advice for starting poets or anyone interested in the crafting of good poetry. It's frank because the author shares some true gems of wisdom that can only be obtained after a lifetime of honing a craft (I'm thinking of the incredible passages about 'details'); and he uses his own examples as well as those of contemporary poets. It's personal because the author puts himself out there and shares his experiences, sharing his successes and his failures and the reality about poetry writing (don't do it for money, fame or chicks). It's no-nonsense because it doesn't try to be all inclusive (in fact he offers several good manuals to refer to if that's what the reader wants), instead he discusses techniques such as the power of similes, and shows their effectiveness in good poetry.
He tells it like it is, and that's the beauty.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Poets may go at the big truths a little cattywampus, but sometimes they do get to them."

This book is one of the best on poetry-writing for the beginner, and the middling poet, and, I don't doubt, someone who is basically Shakespeare himself. Every time I read it I get more out of it.

Five stars for the big truths.

Total score: 5/5 stars

[Anne White · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I'd had this book in writing class years ago. Practical and enjoyable, it could be read by teens and up. (Small content warning on just a couple of the included poems.)

[Michal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a favorite. The book is "as advertised" in the title, but is also much more in that it explains a lot about how poetry works, without taking away any of the magic. Another great book along these lines is How to Read a Poem and Start Poetry Circle by Molly Peacock.

[félon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a decent book, some really helpful stuff in there but a lot of assumptions too. The kind of advice seemed limited to certain kinds of poetry and slightly judgy in places about certain approaches. It's also kind of amusing when books like this say don't worry about the rules, there are no rules, there are no good or bad poems, then proceeds to tell you what approach to take, usually under the guise of making it 'effective' (which is essentially a subtle way of saying 'good'). I do get it; he's genuinely telling people not to worry about the ~rules~ too much (because, technically, there aren't any, only conventions), but was also writing advice for those who do get stuck. But still.

One thing I really didn't like had nothing to do with the book itself; so many of the poem examples he used depicted animal death. That doesn't affect my rating or anything but it was still off-putting and just not fun to keep encountering it when I was just trying to figure out how to improve my own poetry assignment. (I'll say also that midway through this book I consulted another and the page I checked in that one ALSO had a brutal depiction of the same thing, so either poets are weirdly fixated on that kind of thing or I'm just cursed to find it everywhere.)

As an aside, there was a poem quoted in this book called 'The Death' by Susan Mitchell, only when I went to look it up I could only find a completely different poem by Mitchell called 'The Dead'. When I searched the first line only two results came up on google, both of them linking to this book. So I have no idea what happened there, where the original poem can be found if it exists, or who might have written it if not Susan Mitchell.

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've selected The Poetry Home Repair Manual, by previous U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, as the "textbook" for my Fall poetry writing class twice now. I looked at a number of standard college texts on the subject (which tend to cost over a hundred dollars for a trade paperback), and I found them to be exhaustive, exhausting, and likely to be intimidating to undergraduates. And therefore likely to be unread.

To take an example, the Wallace & Boisseau textbook spends the first five chapters, over 140 pages, on form and the prosody of form. Do contemporary poets write and sell form?? Mostly not. Is a knowledge of form required to write contemporary poetry? No, not really. (It can be very useful, and I teach it, but I hold it for the last third of the term, once the students have learned enough to find prosody additive rather than obstructive.) So why, pray tell, would you set up the textbook that way??

Since I use this to teach, I won't go on in detail. But Kooser takes a practical, calm approach to the subject, and gives the reader enough to get going, and a reminder for those who are struggling. My only quibble is that near the end he forgets that most poets will have to spend some time in the minor leagues before they break through to the most prestigious magazines. He gives a bit of advice that amounts to "don't accept a contract in Major League Baseball unless it's a major-market franchise."

Otherwise, his attitudes toward contemporary poetry generally mirror my own, so I find him wise.

[Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This slim volume is arguably the best how-to book on writing poetry that reads like a fascinating book. Kooser is a former U.S. poet laureate, but the book is down-to-earth, and deceptively simple.

The book is divided into chapters that are also concerns for writers: First Impressions, Writing for Others, Writing from Memory as well as topics that poets need to address: Working with Detail, Controlling Effects, Don't Worry About the Rules.

Every writer, poet or not, needs to have this useful, friendly, easy book on their shelf. Also contains excellent poems (both Kooser's and others) with commentary.

[R.K. Goff · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, if Immersed in Verse is the funny childish love of poetry and awesome inspiration bit--then this baby is the "we're all-grown up, and now have settled down to work on art . . . but we haven't quite given up our sense of humor" bit.

The advice is absolutely indispensable, and ought to be required reading for every aspiring poet. It's also a delight to read--just delicious.

Please, oh please, read.

[Emma Sea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a marvelous book about words and writing, not just for poets but for prose writers too. Good stuff about the weight of a noun, and when the tentative quality of a simile works better than a strident metaphor. Kooser made me feel it was okay that I find I don't like a lot of poetry, and he made me identify why I don't like it, at the same time as he introduced me to some wonderful new-to-me poets. I rec to all.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kooser conducts a straightforward discussion of the role of poetry and devices beginners can employ to get started writing. Although this text is an informative, easy read, it's geared more towards the individual rather than a classroom setting. He doesn't attempt to 'teach' poetic styles; he presents poetic advice.

[Debbie Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than practical advice for beginning poets, this is a book that all poets should have on their bookshelves. I especially enjoyed the chapter on "Fine-Tuning Metaphors and Similes" and the examples the author used to demonstrate the different techniques in writing. Each chapter includes helpful lessons as well as strong poems.

[N.L. Riviezzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the variety of books on writing poetry that I have read, this is one of the most intriguing. It is an excellent source for beginners but has some thought-provoking information for those trying to fine-tune their poetic craft.

[Deja Bertucci · Rating 4 out of 5]

I use this to teach beginning creative writers. Works like a champ.

I don't agree with everything he says, and there's some stuff I really wish he'd say. But overall he does the job proud.

[Deb Lund · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've got loads of poetry manuals on my shelf, but this one? It's got voice like a well-done work of fiction.

[Kristin Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I have found on poetry writing. There is no meaningless dribble, no painfully overstated professor talk. It helped me become a much better writer.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear ideas on the craft of poetry revision and help for the beginning serious poet as well. Thoroughly enjoyed the voice and ideas.

[Margaret Perkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started out feeling disappointed in this book, but it won me over in the end (which is rare!). I thought this would be full of exercises I could try, but it's not. It is rather, as I think a quote on the back of the book says, the voice of a trusted friend or mentor giving you wisdom they've accumulated over a lifetime.
Ted Kooser advocates for accessible poetry - poetry that isn't unnecessarily complicated or hard to understand. I agree with him for the most part, but another part of me resists this; isn't a lot of poetry - stuff that's considered really good - hard to understand? But he convinced me when he said "If [beginner poets] were to study the careers of famous poets upon whose work they're modeling their own, they'd find that those writers were often, in their early years, publishing clear, understandable poems." I like the idea that you have to master "easier" poetry and thoroughly understand what it's doing before you evolve to more challenging poetry.
One of the best parts of this book is the amount of poetry that Kooser quotes. I loved almost every single poem he included. And they are indeed clear poems, but they're not dumb. Each of them was surprising, enchanting, thought provoking, or beautiful. I earmarked many of them to read again later.
I learned a few interesting things I didn't know. Like the fact that the bulk of modern poetry is in the present tense! You have to make choices about tense when you're writing a poem. Is that the tense that best serves what you're trying to accomplish, or did you just pick it because it's the default?
The last chapter was the most practical and helpful for me. It's about the process of revising, waiting, and submitting. I loved his tips on asking for feedback from others, particularly that you should never use the words "good" or "bad" when talking about your work or someone else's. "The last thing you need is a value judgement." He has good questions to ask that are value-neutral: "Does this seem clear to you?" "Can you think of ways I could make this more interesting?" "Are there places where your mind drifted away?" "What would you omit?" "What more would you like to know?"
Overall, a good book and one I'll definitely return to.

[Poiema · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Poetry Home Repair Manual has really expanded my horizons, because prior to reading this I was mainly conversant with the "old" poets: John Donne, George Herbert, Keats, Longfellow, Dickinson. Ted opened me up to modern poetry, enlarged my repertoire, and gave me new ways to look at poetry.

This was a book I stumbled upon by serendipity whilst enjoying a latte at Postscript, a fine stationery/bookstore in Ashland, Nebraska, one of my favorite haunts. By the time I finished my coffee, I knew I had to take this book home with me!

Since then I have listened to Ted Kooser's poems on YouTube, and earmarked some of his other books for future enjoyment.

Ted's "down home" insights make poetry accessible. I had to laugh at his analogy of a poem being like a styrofoam tray containing ham cubes, shrink wrapped at the grocer's:

"The sonnet is the tray and the poem is the ham. All too often the tray is in charge of how the poem winds up looking. A villanelle tray or a sestina tray will hold just so much ham, and if you don't put enough meat on it, the poem looks like there's too much air in the package. It just doesn't have that sleek, shrink-wrapped feeling that you get when the form seems to extend from the meat itself. And if you put in more ham than the little tray can handle, the poem bulges and looks like it might pop open in your bag before you get home. Writing poems in fixed forms can be difficult because you have to carefully count and sort and place the ham cubes till they fit precisely on the tray. When it works, you've got something that looks just fine and doesn't call too much attention to itself. Your reader says, 'Oh, look, ham cubes. I'd better get some for the soup.'"

His analogy is so. . . Nebraskan! As a fellow Nebraskan, I really enjoyed making acquaintance via this book. I also greatly enjoyed the modern poems he used as examples and intend to search out more from Jane Kenyan, Frank Steele, Linda Pastan, and a few others. And, if I ever decide to try my hand at writing poetry, this book will serve as an excellent guide!

[Kristin Boldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You can learn to love tinkering with drafts of poems till a warm hand from somewhere above you reaches down, unscrews the top of your head, and drops in a solution that blows your ears off." This is a book that combines commonsensical advice with real world cautions, has a ton of great poems as examples, plus examples of how they might have been worse w different choices. Also, there's a constant reminder that writing is to make connection, and not to settle for the easy phrase, metaphor, or incident.

I found the more basic front end more helpful than the back, which got too specific about metaphor for this beginning poet. It ends with a very dated chapter on submission. Overall this book is like a quiet smart friend who is good at something and wants to sit down and tell you about it so you can avoid some of the obvious mistakes he's made and that he sees others making. It's a useful, kind, and cozy book.

[Martta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really informative and gave me a lot to think about. There were some things that just seem so obvious, but you don't really think about until he points it out. There was so much like useful stuff that I didn't want to forget that I just had to take notes.

The language was super chill and easy to read, and the examples that Kooser provided really helped me understand what he was saying. You can really see how much poetry means to him in the way he talks about it, and it was honestly very indearing and kind of inspiring to read.

Essentially, read it :)

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a simple yet really helpful guide to writing poetry. Focuses not on the technical form of form or rhyme but the content, such as metaphor versus simile and the writer's voice and self revelation. Written in a conversational tone, this is really accessible and had given me plenty to reflect upon.

[Danielle Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, simple, practical advice to improve your craft. I’m pleased to have read this if only for the fact that the example poems Kooser chose were excellent. The last chapter has some outdated advice about publishing in literary magazines, but this is to be expected from a book from 2005.

[Danielle Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmm hmm hmm, how to rate this book. Well, the title alone deserves 5 stars. The included poems perhaps 3 stars overall - some I loved and others I did not. I enjoyed leafing through all the example poems. And yo be honest I didn’t read any of the parts that weren’t poems, any of the parts they explain how to write poems…I just wanted the poems themselves. Probably a 3.5 star book from what I read, but since it is Kooser I’ll bump it up to 4

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming from a budding poet, the advice in this book is instrumental in writing better stuff. I would consider it required reading tbh. A lot of it is so practical you could carry it to other art mediums, not just poetry.