The Poetry Workbook: Learn by Reading, Learn by Doing

It’s the complaint of many an editor, “this person just doesn’t read contemporary literature!”  A rejection slip goes out.  The poet may never know what sabotaged his submission to that publisher, so into another envelope goes the same set of poems, destined for another rejection. 

Informal experiments performed by disgruntled poets suggest that if John Donne or Elizabeth Barrett Browning submitted their work today it would never see print.  So too the work of those who write as if they are contemporaries of Donne or Browning.  As artists we must learn from our predecessors, yet use the tools we’ve gained in a new way.

For instance, one writing a sonnet today must make different choices than Shakespeare would.  Rules of rhyme, word order and word choice have changed from what they were even decades ago, as has what constitutes interesting subject matter. 

In this set of lessons we will use contemporary poetry to identify what today’s editors demand. Each lesson will feature a short exercise set at reinforcing what we have learned from the reading. The long term goal is to train the reader to read as a poet does – at first enjoying, then analyzing and finally absorbing a work. In this way the reader’s own poetry will grow and develop, and become part of that living body of work: Contemporary poetry today.