Customer Reviews

Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems (Imagination, No. 11)

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This is an excellent collection of essays about how to put a book of poetry together, offering differnt points of view by people who have had a book of poetry published (not self-published) or won a contest that resulted in publication of their manuscripts. Here we see several ways to think about your manuscript beyond the obvious ones such as chronological or by subject matter. Some suggesions will add energy, tension, and mystery to your collection. Very helpful.

Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems (Imagination, No. 11) (Imagination)
I had my first full collection of poems published two years ago, and could have really used this book then. As it is, I'm delighted to have found it now, as I work on my second collection.

ORDERING THE STORM is a collection of essays, each one by a noted poet in the United States, many of whom have also had extensive teaching experience in the field of creative writing. As such it provides not just one approach, but many approaches, to ordering a collection of poems. Some ideas strike me as very helpful ; some less so. That is in the nature of the book. It's very encouraging to hear that even much-published poets have trouble transforming a pile of decent poems into a unified whole.

The one idea I've been running with this last fortnight (I'm afraid I forget which poet suggests this) is : the first poem in the collection can be beautiful, while the last one is more effective if it is philosophical. It's not a dogma, just an idea, but one which I am finding very fruitful.There are no absolute "shoulds" in this book, and that's the joy of it.

At last! a book to help poets sift, sort, and organize their work.... With each chapter written by a well-published poet, the book provides a mini-course with many ideas for putting together a book or chapbook of poetry. I've tried to do this on my own for ages but get so overwhelmed by the numbers and choices, I usually just throw up my hands! So I was especially glad to see that poets whose work I know had the same problem. Ordering The Storm calms that storm and gives this published poet the confidence to try and try again.

If you are composing a book of poems, then you NEED this book. It will repay whatever you pay for it many fold.