Michael Bugeja's book on poetry has always inspired me to keep writing. While there are other books that get more into the technique of writing poetry, Bugeja offers a writing plan based on idea generation.
One of his idea generation ideas is to make a list of the high points, low points and turning points of your life. Then, for each point, think about specific incidents that occurred and pick one to use. For each incident there should either be an epiphany or peak experience associated with it. Your poem is the high or low point, the incident and the epiphany! He uses a system of writing a paragraph about the poem, sketching key elements of the poem, hold back the urge to write right away, think about the poem and then compose the poem.
The author has a separate chapter discussing the different aspects of love poems, nature and environmental poems, extranatural poems, war poems, political poems and occasion poems. For example, a love poem could be a complaint, love tribute, a proposal, love concept, an obstacle, absent love, love moment, a reconciliation, love token, illicit love or future love. Each of the other category of poems have their own subcategories. Then at the end of each chapter are Level One, Level Two and Level Three idea generation programs that would help you generate 10 poem ideas for each level. The reader would go through the entire book using the Level One programs before going back and using Level Two, then Level Three. The reader should keep all of these ideas in a notebook, journal, etc... before beginning to write. You can see how inspirational all of these ideas are for the reader and how much material you would have to write with by the time you began to write.
The author has some information on technique. He covers voice, the line, the stanza, the title, meter and rhyme in separate chapters. Again, at the end of each chapter are Level One, Level Two and Level Three exercises where you go to your Idea File and begin drafting poems.
The third and final part of the book is about poem formats. He discusses the narrative poem, the lyric poem, the dramatic poem, free verse, the sonnet, form poems, the sequence and the total poem in separate chapters. Again, at the end of the chapters are Level One, Level Two and Level Three exercises where you work on your earlier poem drafts and revise them in the above formats. Mini anthologies of these formats are included for the reader's reference.
The Art and Craft of Poetry gets you into writing immediately. It is the most practical poetry writing instruction book that I have ever seen. Instead of just reading about how to write poetry, you learn how to write poetry by writing poetry itself.
10 out of 5 stars!
