Be a Poet

Originally published in 2007 by Twickenham Press, Be a Poet! is a friendly, accessible guidebook for beginning poets of all ages and situations, containing many exercises designed to expand their repertoire of rhythms and forms. Bogen uses examples from canonical poets like Carl Sandburg and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as three contemporary poets whom she has interviewed personally about their writing habits and tricks. This handbook for the poetically inclined includes in-depth coverage of words and how to use them effectively, plus chapters on rhyming, rhythm, the iamb from blank verse to the various forms of the sonnet, and exotica like art songs, Pindaric and Horatian odes, and terza rima. Its concluding appendix listing addresses of writers' organizations is especially useful.