Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Mind's Eye
Imagery
Sound and Idiom
Imagination
One
Words that Paint, Images that Speak
Painting Pictures with Words
The Power of a Single Image
Rendering Human Drama
The Verb as Catalyst
Exploring with Images
The Quicksand of Abstraction
A Note on Revision
Getting Started
The Poet뭩 Note Card
Two
The Lively Image vs. The Deadly Clich?BR>
Observations that Surprise
Metaphors and Similes
Listing
The Interior World
The Other Senses
Dramatizing Everyday Subjects
The Poet's Note Card
Three
The Sound of Contemporary Poetry
Why Poems Don뭪 Sing Like Songs
Conversational Poetry
Musical Poetry
How We Talk Back Home
Poems That Go Fast
Revising for Sound
The Poet's Note Card
Four
Conflict and Transformation
The Problem of the Human Heart
Tension and Conflict
The Transformative Moment
Portraying Stasis
Sentiment vs. Sentimentality
Revising for Clarity
The Poet's Note Card
Five
Do Poems Have Plot?
Keeping Your Reader on Edge
Lyric Interludes
Narrative and the Transformative Moment
Braiding
Heightening the Drama
Stories of Childhood
Closure
The Poet's Note Card
Six
Empathy and Creativity
Becoming the Other
The Historical Persona
Dramatizing Current Events
Myth
The Psyche Under Pressure
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Seven
Leaping through Time and Space
The Poetic Sequence
Multiple Pictures
Multiple Narratives
Non-Numerical Sequences
Revising toward the Sequence
The Poet's Note Card
Eight
Frames and Forms
Free Verse and the Question of Form
Syllabics, Metrics and Blank Verse
Rhyming
The Sonnet
The Villanelle
The Sestina
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Nine
Stanzas, Prose, and the Field of the Page
Organizing Words on the Page
The Prose Poem
Aeration
Visual Caesurae
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Ten
Surrealism
The Logic of Alogical Images
Nonsense vs. Instinct
Dream Poems
Dreamtime and Magical Realism
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Eleven
Writing about Sadness
The Elegy
Imagery and Restraint
Threnody
Expectation and Surprise
The Poet's Note Card
Twelve
Poetry and Eros
The Predicament of the Love Poem
Conflict and Tone
The Language of Desire
Erotic Poetry
The Poet's Note Card
Thirteen
The Poetry of Witness
Restraint
War and Witness
Writing about Racism
Poems about Gender
The Question of Culpability
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Fourteen
Stretching the Imagination
The Next Challenge
Eckphrasis
The Drama of Sport
The Serious Business of the Funny Poem
Divinity and Uncertainty
Philosophical Imagery
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Fifteen
Breaking the Rules, Nurturing the Weird
Eccentricity and Voice
Being Different
Associative Journeys
Undermining the Rules of Grammar
Enigma Poems
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Appendix
The Culture of Poetry
Writing Groups
Public Readings
How to Get Published
?Choosing Journals
?Submitting Poems by Mail
?Submitting Poems by Email
?Keeping a Submissions Log
?On Simultaneous Submissions
?Rejection and Acceptance
The Poet's Note Card
