Primer for Poets
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A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry guides the young poet toward a deeper understanding of how poetry can function in his or her life, while also introducing the art in an exciting new way. Using such poems as Theodore Roethkeβs "My Papaβs Waltz" and Robert Haydenβs "Those Winter Sundays," the Primer encourages young writers to approach their "thresholds"βthose places where disorder meets order, where shaping imagination can turn language into urgent and persuasive poems. It provides the poet with more than a dozen focused writing exercises and explains essential topics such as the personal and cultural threshold; the four forces that animate poetic language (naming, singing, saying, imagining); tactics of revision; ecstasy and engagement as motives for poetry; and how to locate and learn from our personal poetic forebears.
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Gregory Orr is the author of fourteen collections of poetry and several books of prose, including The Blessings: A Memoir, A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry, and Poetry as Survival. He is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, where he founded its MFA Program in Writing. He lives with his wife, the painter Trisha Orr, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
