Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing PoetryFrom one of the most esteemed American poets of the twenty-first century comes a celebration of poetry and an invitation for anyone to experience its beauty and wonder. Full of fresh and exciting insights, Making Your Own Days illuminates the somewhat mysterious subject of poetry for those who read it and for those who write it—as well as for those who would like to read and write it better. By treating poetry not as a special use of language but as a distinct language—unlike the one used in prose and conversation—Koch clarifies the nature of poetic inspiration, how poems are written and revised, and what happens to the heart and mind while reading a poem. Koch also provides a rich anthology of more than ninety works from poets past and present. Lyric poems, excerpts from long poems and poetic plays, poems in English, and poems in translation from Homer and Sappho to Lorca, Snyder, and Ashbery; each selection is accompanied by an explanatory note designed to complement and clarify the text and to put pleasure back into the experience of poetry. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 65
Page 112
... reader to know what to expect in reading it . Knowing , for example , the importance of sound in poetry , the way its language is led along musically from one word to another , that it is inclined toward personification and apostrophe ...
... reader to know what to expect in reading it . Knowing , for example , the importance of sound in poetry , the way its language is led along musically from one word to another , that it is inclined toward personification and apostrophe ...
Page 123
... reader gets . There are , it should be added , poems that are deliberately and perhaps permanently unclear - see , for example , those of Ashbery and Ceravolo in the anthology . Poets may wish to give , and readers be interested in the ...
... reader gets . There are , it should be added , poems that are deliberately and perhaps permanently unclear - see , for example , those of Ashbery and Ceravolo in the anthology . Poets may wish to give , and readers be interested in the ...
Page 292
... reader , along with the speaker , is comforted at the end by the snow , which has created a " white city " of another kind . None of this is explicitly stated ; the reader has one experience after another , and the understanding of the ...
... reader , along with the speaker , is comforted at the end by the snow , which has created a " white city " of another kind . None of this is explicitly stated ; the reader has one experience after another , and the understanding of the ...
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
anthology apostrophe Auden beauty bird Black Mountain blackbird blank verse blue comparisons Copyright D. H. Lawrence dawn death dream earth Elegy emotional everything example excitement experience eyes EZRA POUND feel flower Frank O'Hara give hear heart iambic iambic pentameter idea inspiration James Schuyler John Ashbery Juliet Keats Kenneth Koch kind language of poetry Li Bai lines live long poems look lovers Mayakovsky meaning meter Mina Loy moon never night non-metrical ordinary personification plays pleasure poet poet's poetic poetry language prose reader Reprinted by permission rhyme rhythm Rilke Romeo seems sensations sense Shakespeare Shelley sleep song sonnet sound speak stanza sweet syllables T. S. Eliot talking thee things thou thought translation W. H. Auden walk Wallace Stevens Whitman William Carlos Williams Williams wind woman words Wordsworth writing poetry wrote Yeats Yeats's