Your First Poem

Most people who want to write a poem never do. They wait for a moment that sounds like a poem. It doesn't come, so they never begin.This book is for them. It assumes no workshop, no class, no prior attempt. It assumes only that you read sometimes, that you have felt things, and that some moment in your life keeps coming back to you for reasons you can't fully explain. That is enough to start.Twenty-five short chapters, in three parts. Starting is about getting something true on the page. Shaping is about turning it into a poem. Revising is about making it the best version of itself. Each chapter is a single page and covers one move: begin in the middle, the image is the engine, where the breaks fall, the turn, hard sounds and soft sounds, cut the first two lines and the last two.Every chapter closes with two pointers — a specific section of a craft book worth reading, and a specific poem that shows the principle at work. Oliver, Kooser, Addonizio and Laux, Longenbach, Hugo, Behn, Theune. Heaney, Clifton, Olds, Limón, Hayden, Merwin, Maggie Smith. You finish with a reading list you will use for years.