Book Launch for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop

Book Launch for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop

Sunday, November 10, 2013

2 PM

Join Diane Lockward and 20 poets featured in the book for a book launch reading for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop at the West Caldwell Public Library (30 Clinton Road, West Caldwell, NJ)

. . . this is a poetry exercise/craft tip book poets (and English instructors) only dream about, a collection divided into sections such as "Sound," "Voice," and "Syntax," each addressing the stated topic with relevant writing/revision suggestions, plus a poem provided as a springboard for writing a poem in a similar mode or form. There are even examples of poems written from the prompt. . . I look forward to the next time I teach introduction to poetry writing because I definitely think students will appreciate the specificity of Lockward's prompts.
Martha Silano, Blue Positive

Diane Lockward is the author of three poetry books, most recently, Temptation by Water. Her poems have been included in such anthologies as Poetry Daily: 360 Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website and Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times, and have been published in such journals as Harvard Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. 

The book conatins model poems with prompts, writing tips, and interviews contributed by 56 of our nation's finest poets, including 13 former and current state Poets Laureate: Kim Addonizio, JoAnn Balingit, Ellen Bass, Jan Beatty, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Robert Bense, Pam Bernard, Michelle Bitting, Deborah Bogen, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Edward Byrne, Kelly Cherry, Philip F. Deaver, Bruce Dethlefsen, Caitlin Doyle, Patricia Fargnoli, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Amy Gerstler, Karin Gottshall, Jennifer Gresham, Bruce Guernsey, Marilyn Hacker, Jeffrey Harrison, Lola Haskins, Jane Hirshfield, Gray Jacobik, Rod Jellema, Richard Jones, Julie Kane, Adele Kenny, Dorianne Laux, Sydney Lea, Hailey Leithauser, Jeffrey Levine, Diane Lockward, Denise Low, Jennifer Maier, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Jeffrey McDaniel, Wesley McNair, Susan Laughter Meyers, Bronwen Butter Newcott, Alicia Ostriker, Linda Pastan, Stanley Plumly, Vern Rutsala, Martha Silano, Marilyn L. Taylor, Matthew Thorburn, Lee Upton, Nance Van Winckel, Ingrid Wendt, Nancy White, Cecilia Woloch, Baron Wormser, Suzanne Zweizig

And an additional 45 accomplished poets whose poems inspired by the prompts in the book serve as samples: Joel Allegretti, Linda Benninghoff, Broeck Blumberg, Rose Mary Boehm, Bob Bradshaw, Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Rachel Dacus, Ann DeVenezia, Liz Dolan, Kristina England, Laura Freedgood, Gail Fishman Gerwin, Erica Goss, Jeanie Greensfelder, Constance Hanstedt, John Hutchinson, Penny Harter, Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll, Tina Kelley, Claire Keyes, Laurie Kolp, Joan Mazza, Janet McCann, Antoinette Libro, Charlotte Mandel, Joan Mazza, Janet McCann, Nancy Bailey Miller, Thomas Moudry, Drew Myron, Shawnte Orion, Donna Pflueger, Wanda Praisner, Susanna Rich, Ken Ronkowitz, Basil Rouskas, Nancy Scott, Martha Silano, Linda Simone, Melissa Studdard, Lisken Van Pelt Dus, Jeanne Wagner, Ingrid Wendt, Scott Wiggerman, Bill Wunder, Michael T. Young, Sander Zulauf

Tenth Annual Celebration of Literary Journals May 19

              

Join 12 literary journals and their editors for the free tenth annual POETRY FESTIVAL: A CELEBRATION OF LITERARY JOURNALS in New Jersey. This annual event, organized by poet Diane Lockward, includes readings throughout the afternoon by poets featured in the journals.

Books by the poets will be available for sale and for signing and the 12 journals will be displayed and available for purchase. This is a great opportunity for poets to talk with the editors about their publications. Each journal will be represented by two poets who have published in that journal.

Sunday, May 19, 2013
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM
West Caldwell Public Library (30 Clinton Road, West Caldwell, New Jersey, 973-226-5441)

The journals that will be represented:

1. Adanna
2. Edison Literary Review
3. Exit 13
4. Journal of New Jersey Poets
5. Lips
6. Painted Bride Quarterly
7. Paterson Literary Review
8. Raintown Review
9. Schuylkill Valley Journal
10. Stillwater Review
11. Tiferet
12. US 1 Worksheets

Scheduled poets reading throughout the afternoon:
ROBERT CARNEVALE
MIKE COHEN
LORRAINE DORAN
JUDITHA DOWD
SANDRA DUGUID
MARTIN FARAWELL
ANDREW �INK� FEINDT
JIM GWYN
MIRIAM HAIER
ERIC HELLER
ERNEST HILBERT
LINDA HILLRINGHOUSE
JANET KIRCHHEIMER
DAVID KOZINSKI
FRANCESCA MAXIME
KATHY NELSON
KATHE PALKA
WANDA PRAISNER
ED ROMOND
LINDA STERN
CHUCK TRIPI
EMILY VOGEL
JOE WEIL
EDYTTA WOJNAR

Ample Parking; Refreshments Available; #33 NJT Bus Stop Within Short Walking Distance; Many Area Restaurants

Directions to Event

Festival Information

Figurative Language

These days, many people associate formal poetry with "old poetry."  Forms, like sonnets, and rhyme schemes are often seen as those things we had to study in school.

When many readers see lines like

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?

their eyes get cloudy - and they stop reading.

Diane Lockward is the author of three poetry books, most recently, Temptation by Water.  Her free monthly poetry newsletter (subscribe here) has reviews, writing tips and a poetry prompt. She is collecting some of those prompts and model poems in a new book, The Crafty Poet, due out later this year.

In one issue, I was struck by Diane's suggestion that literal language is not always enough for a poem.

The just-right use of the figurative�moving beyond the dictionary meaning of words�can open a poem to both broader interpretation and greater exactness. Metaphor and simile are what we first think of when we consider figurative language, but there are enough other rhetorical figures to boggle the mind. 

Five of the figurative tools that she suggests (beyond the familiar metaphor and simile) are apostrophe, personification, hyperbole, metonymy, and synecdoche. They are all good tools that poets should know and use.

To use apostrophe, as John Donne does, for example, in his sonnet �Death, be not proud,� is to bring to the subject an immediacy not otherwise possible. Direct address achieves this feeling of being up-close and personal.

Personification creates a similar effect of immediacy. It can enliven a poem and heighten its emotion, as Philip Levine does in �Animals Are Passing from Our Lives,� a poem in which the pig speaking is given human qualities: It's wonderful how I jog / on four honed-down ivory toes. Personification can be tricky; the key is knowing when to use it and how much is enough in a poem.

Frost, in �After Apple-Picking,� finds a surprisingly convincing way to get across the idea �I have had too much / Of apple picking� with the hyperbole �There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch.�

Metonymy, with its substitution of an associated word for the intended one, shortwires the way we think of the substituted term and thereby offers an efficiency of language. In �How She Described Her Ex-Husband When the Police Called,� poet Martha Clarkson ends with, "He�s the joker pinned in bicycle spokes / vanishing down the street." Because it�s common knowledge that a joker is a playing card, the substitution works.

Synecdoche, with its substitution of a part for the whole, is a type of metonymy, providing that same efficiency. T. S. Eliot uses synecdoche in �The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock� in the lines "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."  In doing so, he gives us claws as an intentional disembodiment.