Real Sofistikashun

A controversial collection of essays on poetry, offering analyses of poetry craft with insightful essays on poets ranging from Robert Pinsky to Louise Gluck.

A controversial collection of essays on poetry, offering analyses of poetry craft with insightful essays on poets ranging from Robert Pinsky to Louise Gluck.

With his characteristic genius for finding connections between writing and the stuff of our lives, Peter Turchi ventures into new and even more surprising territory. In A Muse and a Maze, Turchi draws out the similarities between writing and puzzle-making and its flip-side, puzzle-solving. As he teases out how mystery lies at the heart of all storytelling, he uncovers the magic—the creation of credible illusion—that writers share with the likes of Houdini and master magicians. In Turchi’s associative narrative, we learn about the history of puzzles, their obsessive quality, and that Benjamin Franklin was a devotee of an ancient precursor of sudoku called Magic Squares. Applying this rich backdrop to the requirements of writing, Turchi reveals as much about the human psyche as he does about the literary imagination and the creative process.

"Here is an astonishingly generous gathering of poetic energies and imaginations aimed toward turning more and more classrooms into scenes of transformative engagement with the prime instrument of our humanity, language. The essential work of exploratory play with words is presented in heartening variety in its necessary wildness, surprising pleasures, gravitas, illumination. This book is a catalogue of invention: visionary, pragmatic, surprising, fun---useful because it's inspiring and vice versa. The poets' essays are themselves an affirmation of the vital presence of poetry in our culture, proof and promise, Q.E.D."---Joan Retallock, coeditor, Poetry and Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary, and author, The Poethical Wager --Book Jacket.

The venture of this inviting collection is to look, from the many vantages that the 35 poets in this eclectic anthology chose to look, at what it was—knowing that a poem can’t be conceived in advance of its creation—that helped their poems to emerge or connected them over time. The Rag-Picker's Guide to Poetry permits an inside view of how poets outwit internal censors and habits of thought, showing how the meticulous and the spontaneous come together in the process of discovery. Within are contained the work and thoughts of: Betty Adcock Joan Aleshire Debra Allbery Elizabeth Arnold David Baker Rick Barot Marianne Boruch Karen Brennan Gabrielle Calvocoressi Michael Collier Carl Dennis Stuart Dischell Roger Fanning Chris Forhan Reginald Gibbons Linda Gregerson Jennifer Grotz Brooks Haxton Tony Hoagland Mark Jarman A. Van Jordan Laura Kasischke Mary Leader Dana Levin James Longenbach Thomas Lux Maurice Manning Heather McHugh Martha Rhodes Alan Shapiro Daniel Tobin Ellen Bryant Voigt Alan Williamson Eleanor Wilner C. Dale Young

In this fresh approach to writing poetry, the coauthor of the perennially popular The Poet's Companion offers sharp insights into the craft of writing. "The creative process is just that," maintains Kim Addonizio. "Not a means to an end, but an ongoing participation." A widely acclaimed poet and finalist for the National Book Award, Addonizio meditates on her own process as she encourages writers to explore both their personal and political worlds, to seek inspiration from poets new and old, and to discover the rich poetic resources of the Internet. Lively, accessible, and informative, Ordinary Genius?provides wisdom gleaned through personal experience and offers a heady variety of writing exercises. Chapters on gender, addiction, race and class, metaphor and line invite each individual writer to find and to hone his or her unique voice. This is the perfect book for both experienced writers and beginners eager to glimpse the angel of poetry.

"This book is a memoir in poetry about family stories, mother-daughter relationships, women’s work, mothering, writing, family secrets, and patterns of communication in close relationships. Faulkner knits connections between a DIY (do-it-yourself) value, economics, and family culture through the use of poems and images, which present four generations of women in her family and trouble “women’s work” of mothering, cooking and crafting. Family stories anchor family culture and provide insight into relational and family life. This work may be used as a teaching tool to get us to think about the stories that we tell and don’t tell in families and the importance of how family is created, maintained, and altered in our stories. The poetry voices the themes of economic and collective family self-reliance and speaks to cultural discourses of feminist resistance and resilience, relational and personal identities. This book can be read for pleasure as a collection of poetry or used as a springboard for reflection and discussion in courses such as family communication, sociology of gender and the family, psychology of women, relational communication, and women’s studies. “Sandra’s innovative arts-based social science text demystifies poetic inquiry, providing readers both an embodied example of excellence and detailed exercises for use when practicing one’s own craft.” – Elizabeth A. Suter, University of Denver “Through this book, Faulkner presents a refreshing way of understanding, researching, and teaching about the communication in families.” – Pamela J. Lannutti, La Salle University “Faulkner takes readers into the personal lives of four generations of mothers and daughters, poetically uncovering concrete aspects of social processes of family, motherhood, relationships, and writing. A fusion of social science and art that invites engagement of all your senses to understand the felt truth of lived experience.” – Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida “Captivating, nuanced, and often surprising, Faulkner’s work is a vital contribution that bridges the chasm between traditional interpersonal communication research and brave new artistic worlds for relationship studies.” Jimmie Manning, Northern Illinois University Social Fictions Series International Editorial Advisory Board Carl Bagley, University of Durham, UK Anna Banks, University of Idaho, USA Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida, USA Rita Irwin, University of British Columbia, Canada J. Gary Knowles, University of Toronto, Canada Laurel Richardson, The Ohio State University (Emeritus), USA Sandra L. Faulkner is Associate Professor of Communication and Director of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at BGSU. Her teaching and research interests include qualitative methodology, poetic inquiry, and sexuality in close relationships. Left Coast Press published her books Poetry as Method: Reporting Research through Verse and Inside Relationships: A Creative Casebook on Relational Communication. Her poetry appears in places such as Qualitative Inquiry, Women & Language, Storm Cellar, Literary Mama, and Sugar House Review, and her chapbook, Hello Kitty Goes to College, was published by dancing girl press. She lives in NW Ohio with her partner, their warrior girl, and a rescue mutt. "