Mind’s Eye, The

Description

Focusing on imagery and sound, The Mind’s Eye is concise, inexpensive, and handy – and is the only poetry writing textbook designed specifically for the college term. 

Featuring a progressive gradation of writing exercises, The Mind’s Eye stresses the foundational importance of imagery as well as sound in contemporary poetry. The textbook guides students through a variety of discussions, models and prompts designed to give them fluency in the major aspects of contemporary poetry writing: imagery, sound, implication, conflict, the lyric (and lyricism), structure, portraiture, narrative, sequencing, surrealism, and other facets of the discipline, especially revision. Built on the author’s three decades of creative writing pedagogy and written in clear, active prose that instructs without condescension, The Mind’s Eye features The Poet’s Note Card, a concise summary of main ideas at the end of each chapter. It discusses traditional form and provides templates for the sonnet and reduces anxiety about writing on difficult topics, including mortality, eros, religion, and politics. Compact and handy, the textbook provides information on how to form friendly poetry writing groups, how to arrange and give poetry readings, and how to publish poems in journals. Teachers will also like the fact that it sells at a lower cost than almost all other textbook options, thus allowing them to assign additional volumes of poetry without fear of burdening students economically.

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Mind’s Eye

Imagery

Sound and Idiom

Imagination

One

Words that Paint, Images that Speak

Painting Pictures with Words

The Power of a Single Image

Rendering Human Drama

The Verb as Catalyst

Exploring with Images

The Quicksand of Abstraction

A Note on Revision 

Getting Started

The Poet’s Note Card

Two

The Lively Image vs. The Deadly Cliché

Observations that Surprise

Metaphors and Similes

Listing

The Interior World

The Other Senses

Dramatizing Everyday Subjects

The Poet’s Note Card

Three

The Sound of Contemporary Poetry                                                  

Why Poems Don’t Sing Like Songs

Conversational Poetry

Musical Poetry

How We Talk Back Home

Poems That Go Fast

Revising for Sound

The Poet’s Note Card

Four

Conflict and Transformation

The Problem of the Human Heart

Tension and Conflict

The Transformative Moment

Portraying Stasis

Sentiment vs. Sentimentality

Revising for Clarity

The Poet’s Note Card

Five

Do Poems Have Plot?

Keeping Your Reader on Edge

Lyric Interludes

Narrative and the Transformative Moment

Braiding

Heightening the Drama

Stories of Childhood

Closure

The Poet’s Note Card

Six

Empathy and Creativity

Becoming the Other

The Historical Persona

Dramatizing Current Events

Myth

The Psyche Under Pressure

The Poet’s Note Card

Seven

Leaping through Time and Space

The Poetic Sequence

Multiple Pictures

Multiple Narratives

Non-Numerical Sequences

Revising toward the Sequence

The Poet’s Note Card

Frames and Forms

Free Verse and the Question of Form

Syllabics, Metrics and Blank Verse

Rhyming

The Sonnet

The Villanelle

The Sestina

The Poet’s Note Card

Nine

Stanzas, Prose, and the Field of the Page

Organizing Words on the Page

The Prose Poem

Aeration

Visual Caesurae

The Poet’s Note Card

Ten

Surrealism

The Logic of Alogical Images

Nonsense vs. Instinct

Dream Poems

Dreamtime and Magical Realism

The Poet’s Note Card

Eleven

Writing about Sadness

The Elegy

Imagery and Restraint

Threnody

Expectation and Surprise

The Poet’s Note Card

Twelve

Poetry and Eros

The Predicament of the Love Poem

Conflict and Tone

The Language of Desire

Erotic Poetry

The Poet’s Note Card

Thirteen

The Poetry of Witness

Restraint                 

War and Witness

Writing about Racism

Poems about Gender

The Question of Culpability

The Poet’s Note Card

Fourteen

Stretching the Imagination

The Next Challenge

Eckphrasis

The Drama of Sport

The Serious Business of the Funny Poem

Divinity and Uncertainty

Philosophical Imagery

The Poet’s Note Card

Fifteen

Breaking the Rules, Nurturing the Weird

Eccentricity and Voice

Being Different

Associative Journeys

Undermining the Rules of Grammar

Enigma Poems

The Poet’s Note Card

Appendix

The Culture of Poetry

Writing Groups

Public Readings

How to Get Published

•               Choosing Journals

•               Submitting Poems by Mail

•               Submitting Poems by Email

•               Keeping a Submissions Log

•               On Simultaneous Submissions

•               Rejection and Acceptance

The Poet’s Note Card

An award-winning poet, Kevin Clark is the author of the collection In the Evening of No Warning. His poems and essays have appeared widely in places such as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, The Southern Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, and Contemporary Literary Criticism. Winner of the Distinguished Teaching Award, he teaches at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and the Rainier Writing Workshop in Tacoma, Washington. He lives with his wife and children on California’s central coast, where he continues to play upper division softball “despite legs like ancient concrete and more injuries than Evel Knievel.”

The Mind’s Eye, written by a published poet, focuses on imagery and sound and has the added benefit of being concise, inexpensive, and handy.  Contemporary poetry as well as traditional form is discussed, with an emphasis on contemporary poets — more than ninety of them — and three student poets.  Chapters deal with difficult topics such as racism, war, mortality, gender, and more.

Focusing on imagery and sound, this groundbreaking book on the teaching of poetry writing is concise, practical, and inexpensive and it’s the only poetry writing text designed specifically for a college term. Winner of the Distinguished Teaching Award, Kevin Clark is a university professor, a widely published poet, and the author of the collection In the Evening of No Warning. Developed and proven over two decades of college level workshops, the flexible progression of lessons and exercises guides students through the major components of contemporary poetry writing.

WHAT YOU’LL FIND IN THIS EDITION

• Clear, active prose that instructs without condescending 
• An adaptable sequence of chapters guiding writers through increasingly complex aspects of poetry: imagery, sound, implication, conflict, transformation, the lyric (and lyricism), structure, portraiture, narrative, traditional forms, sequencing, and other facets of the art, especially revision.
•  More than 100 writing exercises, ranging from the general to the highly specific.
•  Over 80 inspiring model poems by a diverse group of well-known contemporary poets plus poems by students. 
•  The Poet’s Note Card, a concise summary of main ideas at the end of each chapter.
•  Suggestions for extending interest in poetry beyond the classroom:  how to form poetry writing groups; how to arrange and give poetry readings; and how to publish poems.

• The Mind’s Eye coordinates a flexible sequence of chapters with a typical fifteen-week college semester (while also adapting easily to a quarter system). Teachers don’t have to spend time creating a complex syllabus, and students will develop their writing skills at an efficient pace.Because other textbooks attempt to address the trade market and the college market,not one other poetry writing textbook offers this teacher-friendly arrangement.
• The Mind’s Eye balances the foundational importance of both imagery and sound – at the expense of neither. The Mind’s Eye helps students develop their imagination by focusing on the power of imagery and the many different types of sound available to them. Many poetry writing textbooks confuse sound with traditional form, but not this one.
• Promoting usability by its compact, handy size and selling at a low cost, The Mind’s Eye allows professors to assign additional volumes of poetry without fear of burdening students’ backpacks or wallets.
• Written in enthusiastic, clear prose, the textbook explains the need for conflict and the transformative moment, while often placing the student right in the middle of the creative process by describing the different, often unpredictable, highly fluid stages of the process itself, including revision. 
• Descriptions of the writng process also take place throughout the textbook, starting with the introduction.  
• Each chapter offers numerous writing exercises, including those that are highly specific and those that are quite general, both of which proceed throughout the book toward greater complexity.
• Recognizing that most poetry is written in free verse today, The Mind’s Eye nevertheless offers an enthusiastic discussion of traditional form, even providing a blank template for the sonnet.
• The textbook provides a wide variety of many model poems by a dramatically diverse group of contemporary poetsand three student poets. More than ninety model poems are provided.  
• The textbook reduces student – and teacher – anxiety about the pitfalls of writing on difficult topics, including mortality, eros, religion, and politics.  
• This textbook provides an appendix that offers students further entrance into the culture of poetry, providing information on how to form friendly poetry writing groups, how to arrange and give poetry readings, and how to publish poems in journals.  
• Sample syllabi are available for the semester and quarter system: 

          Semester System::
           http://kevinclarkpoet.com/pdf/SEMESTERSYLLABUS.pdf

            Quarter System:
            http://kevinclarkpoet.com/pdf/QUARTERSYLLABUS.pdf  

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