Customer Reviews

A Poet's Guide to Poetry (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

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I'm using Kinzie's book right now in a poetry class I teach. I think it's one of the few books to actually talk about the kinds of tensions that make poems work and not work. I'm especially impressed by her discussions of the way lines and sentences work with and at times against one another. I haven't read in any of the recent crop of books on prosody anything about the relationship of sentence to line, which makes Kinzie's work all the more exciting and original. And smart. I recommend this book to anyone who's really interested in the kinds of questions all poets must face. I wish someone would've given me this much information before I got to grad school. It's a terrific book, and not so hard to understand as the numbers of pages might suggest.

In her Introduction, Kinzie says "Those who have a wide acquaintance with with poetry... will, I hope, find the view of the artistic process... properly challenging." I think her hope will be fulfilled.

The book is excellent, but demanding. I would recommend it for practicing poets, MFA students and teachers, and true lovers of poetry: if you already "get" poetry, then Kinzie's book will help you get a lot more. Kinzie's treatment is especially successful at communicating the fluidity and interconnectedness of specific elements of a poem.

On the other hand, if in the past you have found poetry inaccessible or intimidating, then this book is not the place to start. Something like Perrine's Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry would serve better.

To learn to enjoy and appreciate poetry is to give yourself a wonderful gift for the rest of your life. Go for it! Get some books! (The first one and the last one are the most important.)

Get a first-rate anthology, with lots of different poets and genres:

Harold Bloom, The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost (a superb single-volume anthology; an incredible value at $13 - $20)

Get some guides to the art:

Laurence Perrine, Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry (a solid intro guide)
Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide (a great way to "take the next step")
Mary Kinzie, A Poet's Guide to Poetry (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) (an excellent "advanced" guide to poetry)

Get some "antidote" poetry. That is, something that helps you (re)connect with the fun and magic of poetry when it starts to seem all Heavy, Deep and Real... when it starts to seem like work. Something like...

Billy Collins, Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry ... or ...
Garrison Keilor, Good Poems ... or ...
Coleman Barks, Essential Rumi

Get at least one book with the "Collected" or "Complete" works of a poet from the Bloom anthology that you find you respond to, because some aspects of poetry only come into view when you read most or all of a poet's oeuvre.

And, get a notebook... get the kind you like writing in, whatever that is. Keep it handy while you read, and write down things you like and want to remember, questions you have, and words to look up. Before you fill up the notebook, you may well find that you're writing sketches and drafts of your own first poems in there too.

A great poet and a great text.

Things that stand out for me: The first sentence of the book: "I believe poets read poetry differently than non-poets do." The book continues to seem like a brilliant reaction to a lack of good textbooks. And Kinzie addresses this: "First, the book should present the sounds and rhythms of poetry alongside consideration of the ideas and thought-units within the poems. It sounds simple enough, yet few introductions to formal poetry now treat sense and sound as parallels that continuously cooperate even when one seems dominant. And few of my recent predecessors give essential space to the chief mechanism of thought: the sentence, along with the other elements of grammatical construction." Kinzie repeatedly uses different takes on the same phrase: "...will help you teach yourself" In the section, Writing the Poem you Read: A View of the Artistic Process she says, "To become better acquainted with poetry you must read poems as if you were writing them. The reader follows...the many paths that were not taken by the author."

This book is a great guide for established and aspiring poets. It covers a large variety of topics, offers essential definitions and provides a plethora of examples. However it was complicated for me. I had to read it more than once to understand it. It is a good but difficult source.

As other reviewers have expressed, this book is more advanced than an "Intro to prosody/forms". That said, it is thankfully not so advanced that it's another plane: It contains a LOT of useful information, definitions, and approaches, especially where it discusses the tension between line and syntax, which I guess is what makes poetry, poetry.
Having said that, the main section, in which various different elements of poetry are discussed, did tend to ramble on at times, losing my interest. Thankfully, the book has an excellent glossary at the back, in which all the things discussed are defined and discussed in a more concise manner, helping immeasurably in reinforcing the point that Kinzie was presumably attempting to make. I also particularly enjoyed the chapter which acts as a primer on free verse, which discusses four different "forms" or aspects of free verse. This, together with the glossary mentioned above, make the book well worth the purchase.

I have read several books on writing poetry to help me get the creative juices flowing. Most of the books i've read have primarily focused on allowing the words, whatever they are, to flow from your mind and onto the paper, and most chapters in those books end with a flamboyant exercise that promices to do just that. This book Has exercises in it; but this is the first book which I have read that has broken the study of a poem into a science. This in essense is a textbook and upon reading it you will learn how to properly analyze a poem, create a straight vision with your poem, and how to maintain style and prose. At least that is how it has helped me.

As a mentor to a class of Advanced Placement, Honors English high school seniors, I wanted a book that would help them appreciate and write poetry in a poetry workshop. This book was a STRUGGLE and a waste of money. DON'T BUY IT. DON'T SUBJECT YOUR STUDENTS TO IT. Kinzie may be a decent poet but she's a less-than-adequate prose writer. Like most poets -- who venture outside that realm -- they (she) could use a lesson in nonfiction prose writing where BREVITY and SIMPLICITY are imperative in keeping and inspiring an audience, getting your message across, and teaching them to appreciate your subject.

Kinzie uses too many ten-dollar words where a fifty-cent word (or less) would've been more effective in getting her ideas across and winning converts instead of "mutineers." Her text is replete with overblown, pompous verbiage. Her compound-complex sentences are CUMBERSOME, to say the least -- with little relief -- throughout her book. Too many of my students (again, these are A students) complained and jumped ship after struggling through only a few chapters. I too abandoned ship soon thereafter.

I regret having suggested this book be ordered for our library. We're happily using several other texts, which I strongly RECOMMEND: two from Mary Oliver (1) Rules for the Dance and (2) Poetry Handbook and (3) Kim Addonizio's Ordinary Genius. My students love them! AND THEY'RE WRITING GOOD POETRY! Kinzie's book almost turned them off to poetry permanently.

For the past forty years as a published essayist, journalist, editor, and ghostwriter, I've written for (and edited) the work of scientists, PhDs, MDs, professors, techno-geeks, CFOs, CPAs, etc. and this book reminds me (headache!) of all those incomprehensible, constipated articles, dissertations, and assorted works I had to edit that were out of touch with the masses and, sadly, in Kinzie's case, many amateur poets and buyers of her book. If I knew Kinzie's address, I'd send her a copy of William Zinsser's On Writing Well.