Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry [Hardcover]

Myra Cohn Livingston (Author), Lisa Desimini (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

What makes a poem a poem? is it simply a matter of taking words and writing them out in verse form and making them rhyme? Or is it actually much more than that-the use of rules about meter, form, and rhyme to create a framework for the expression of special observations and ideas?

POEM-MAKING is a handbook of the mechanics of writing poetry. In a clear, understandable tone it introduces children to the different voices of poetry; types of rhyme and other elements of sound, rhythm, and metrics; and some of the most common forms of poetry.

Myra Cohn Livingston is a well known author, anthologist, poet, and teacher. She has used all her experiences in these fields to make POEM MAKING a useful, accessible, and unique guide for children to use in creating poems of their own.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-9-- This well-known poet, anthologist, and teacher demonstrates what makes a poem a poem in a concise, simple, readable manner. She explains the various voices of poetry; types of rhyme; and other elements of sound, rhythm, and metrics. She also discusses figures of speech such as simile, metaphor, and personification; and the forms of haiku, cinquain, limerick, free verse, and concrete poetry. The book is organized well, each chapter building successfully on the previous one. The examples throughout draw from the works of many familiar poets, and effectively illustrate Livingston's points. However, there are no explanations for the notations used to diagram meter; for some they may be obvious in context, but perhaps not for all. The author treats mechanics and style with much more detail than X. J. Kennedy's Knock at a Star (Little, 1985), which, while it supplies excellent and profuse examples and is extremely readable, only touches on the surface, especially where it concerns meter. While this book is an excellent introduction to the serious craftsmanship of poetry for beginners, it ends rather abruptly and, because its approach is more academic than in other books, it is likely that few children will pick it up on their own. It will certainly be useful for teachers, easily refreshing their memories of the basics and giving them a guideline to follow in teaching poetry. --Annette Curtis Klause, Montgomery County Department of Public Libraries, MD
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

As Livingston says in her introduction, she invites young people ``to make the image, the thought, even the sound [of an experience] come alive...by arranging words, making a sort of music...to experience the joy of making a poem.'' This detailed, carefully organized volume makes the invitation irresistible. Admirably, the author doesn't condescend to her audience by skimping on the complexities; she gives the real concepts and terminology--apostrophe, tercet, consonance, dactyl, cinquain- -building from voice to the patterns and uses of sound to imagery, explaining with consummate clarity and generously providing excellent examples with a wide range of sophistication: Mother Goose to Fitzgerald's Homer. She's never pedantic; her eye and ear are consistently on the poem that the devices serve, while her occasional questions to the reader are not merely rhetorical but well framed to provoke imaginative thought. The last chapter is on concrete poetry, with some delightful examples of typography mimicking and extending meaning. Like a provocative poem, the book leaves readers without a neatly wrapped conclusion--the better, perhaps, to continue their own thoughts. An inspiring introduction to a notably thorny but potentially rewarding topic. Index. (Nonfiction. 10-14) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st edition (June 4, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060240199
• ISBN-13: 978-0060240196
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #460,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This works for a beginning adult poet..., October 17, 2004

By 

Edward Lewis "tigerlewis" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry (Library Binding)

When I purchased "Poem-Making", about four years ago, I had never written a poem and detested the idea of actually reading the stuff. The reason I bought the book was because I'm a composer of music and I wanted to beging writing lyrics to my own songs. I thought writing poetry and writing lyrics was the same thing.

I was wrong!!!

But before I figured it out, I was hooked. By the time I realized writing lyrics and writing poetry were two seperate skills, I had learned to appreciate poetry in ways that I had never expected.

Livingston's book played a functioning role in this process. I don't much care for concrete poetry, but all of the other topics covered were just what I needed at that time in my development. I've written about 200 poems since I read her book and actually read poetry daily. Coming from a guy who always considered poetry to be "sissy stuff", I think that says a lot.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not what I was expecting, but well done., July 7, 2001

By 

Daryl Anderson (Trumansburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry (Hardcover)

"Forms what affirms" according to the slyly alliterative phrase of my favorite poet, James Merrill; he was a master of allowing the formal anchor to support powerful and multi-layered lyricism. In the hands of a superb craftsman such as Merrill, one sees new dynamism in poetic forms.

But, I've always wondered at the role of form in teaching poetry. This year I had the unusual opportunity to teach writing to 6th graders. I purchased Myra Cohn Livingston's book as an assist to my planning for an extensive poetry unit. I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it.

I have often worried that an emphasis on 'clever' forms such as "name" or "shape" poems distorts younger students' sense of what poetry is or can be. I feel that I spent quite a bit of this past year nudging this or that young poet to move beyond the poem shaped like a football to the one which captured, in its words, their delight with the game. Form became a wall blocking the view of things more important. But I must say that I wouldn't join those who would abandon form. And my students often took such delight in these previously-learned approaches that I could hardly wish to diminish their enthusiasm.

Subtitled "Ways to begin writing poetry", I expected this book would provide exercises and the like which ignite or launch a writing process. In a sense it does this. But the ignition is apparently intended to be that of a given form. Having looked at, e.g., elements of "sound" in poetry, a student might launch by trying to create a poem emphasizing alliteration. Limericks, haiku, cinquains and the other specific forms receive similar treatment.

In another way I was somewhat confused about the book's stance - in this case regarding its own audience. If it wasn't to be a collection of entry points for teachers, I thought that it would be a book written for my students to read or browse. Instead, it is a collection of essays about voice and form which a teacher or an older student poet will benefit from reading. Its certainly not aimed at the reading level of my younger poets and poetesses.

Livingston's writing is crisp and engaging and the book is a pleasure to read. I would be comfortable handing it to a 14-year-old poet as a self-teaching tool but ended up satisfied with its role in my teaching and thinking about poetry. As one who does not take too fondly to taxonomies of poetic form, technical treatises and the like, I found it to be exactly at my level in many ways.... just not what I expected.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good intro into poetry, June 20, 2010

By 

Metin Sabuncu - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry (Library Binding)

This book is an OK book to start learning poetry.

I liked how Myra Cohn Livingston sketched a cypress tree by the way she placed the lines of the poem. That is very artistic indeed, now I have to figure out how to draw a cat!