Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry [Paperback]

David Mason (Author), John Frederick Nims (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0072819596 | ISBN-13: 978-0072819595 | Publication Date: June 7, 2005 | Edition: 5

WESTERN WIND is an introduction to the elements of craft that make poetry sing, a superior anthology of classic and contemporary poetry, and a guide for students to poetics, writing about poetry, and critical theory. In this text, two well respected poets bring their love of the craft of poetry into a book that teaches as well as inspires. The text also includes exercises, chapter summaries, games, diagrams, illustrations, and 4-color reproductions of great works of art.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Mason was born and raised in Bellingham, Washington, and received degrees from The Colorado College and the University of Rochester. He spent most of his twenties traveling and working as a manual laborer, with a brief stint working for a film company. He has taught at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, and is now on the faculty of The Colorado College. He lives in the mountains outside Colorado Springs. Mason’s two prize-winning books of poems are The Buried Houses (1991) and The Country I Remember (1996). With Mark Jarman he co-edited Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism (1996; reprinted 1998) and with the late John Frederick Nims Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry (2000). His collection of literary essays, The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry, appeared in 2000. Mason is also a memoirist, fiction writer and frequent book reviewer.

Born in Muskegon, Michigan, John Frederick Nims received his M.A. from the University of Notre Dame and his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Chicago. He has taught poetry and given workshops in poetry at Notre Dame, the University of Toronto, the University of Illinois at Urbana, Harvard University, Willialms College, the University of Florida, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the universities of Florence and Madrid and has been on the staff of many writers’ conferences, including the one at Bread Loaf, Vermont, where he taught for more than ten years. He is the author of eight books of poetry among them, The Iron Pastoral, Knowledge of the Evening (a National Book Award nominee), The Kiss: A Jambalaya, Zany in Denim, and The Six Cornered Snowflake—books that have brought him awards from The National Foundation of Arts and Humanities, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Brandeis University, which awarded him its Creative Arts Citation in Poetry. He has been the Phi Beta Kappa poet at the College of William and Mary and at Harvard University. He has also published several books of translations, including Sappho to Valery: Poems in Translation, The Poems of St. John of the Cross, and The Complete Poems of Michelangelo and edited The Harper Anthology of Poetry. Several times on the staff of Poetry (Chicago), he was its editor from 1978 to 1984. In 1982, he was awarded the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets; in 1986, a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry; in 1991, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry.

Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; 5 edition (June 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072819596
• ISBN-13: 978-0072819595
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars too few aspiring poets read this book, November 3, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Western Wind: An Introduction To Poetry - Third Edition (Paperback)

Almost all contemporary "workshop" style poetry commits the simplest and most fatal of mistakes, such as using vague imagery, dwelling in abstractions, or lapsing into sentimentality. These flaws and more are addressed in this lucidly written book, which contains sections on the concrete image, sentiment, and intelligence and their places in poetry. Its only drawback is that its anthology section is too brief. Prospective poets would do well to begin here, and to supplement their reading with Fussell's "Poetic Meter and Poetic Form," Harvey Gross's "Sound and Form in Modern Poetry," and Perkins's "History of Modern Poetry," among others.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Introduction to Poetry + A Great Anthology, October 8, 2005

By 

Daniel R. Sanderman (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry (Paperback)

WESTERN WIND is an outstanding introduction to poetry. When I was an undergraduate, it was assigned as our main textbook for an introduction to poetry class. It contains information about every aspect of poetry you can think of, allowing it to serve either as a cover-to-cover introduction or as a reference manual. Since there are no images of the book, I've provided a bit of the book's contents:

Chapter One: The Role of the Senses, The Specific Image

Chapter Two: Simile and Metaphor, Analogy

Chapter Three: Synecdoche, Metonymy, The Symbol, Thing-Poems, Allegory,

Chapter Four: Antipoetry, Paradox, Irony, Understatement-The Witheld Image, Overstatement

Chapter Five: The Role of Emotion, Sense and Sentimentality

Chapter Six: Living Words, Less is More

Chapter Seven: Vowels, Consonants

Chapter Eight: Language as Mimicry, A Reason for Rhyme?, Off-Rhyme, The Music of Poetry

Chapter Nine: Rhythm, Repetition as Rhythm, The Rhythm of Accent, A Note on Scansion, Iambic Pentameter, Variations on Iambic, Meter and Rhythm, Line Length

Chapter Ten: Other Syllable-Stress Rhythms, Strong-Stress Rhythms, Sprung Rhythms, A Word About Quantity, Syllabic Meter, Free Verse, Free Rhythms, The Variable Foot, Concrete Poetry, The Prose Poem

Chapter Eleven: The Sentence, Use of Connectives, Parallelism, Sentence Structure, Levels of Language, New Words, New Language

Chapter Twelve: Fixed Stanza Forms, Fixed Forms for Poems,

Chapter Thirteen: Common Sense, Uncommon Sense

Chapter Fourteen: Inspiration and Effort

As you can see, there is plenty here to sink your teeth into. Along the way, each chapter contains exercises designed to help you master the concepts you are learning in each section. Additionally, there are hundreds of examples, from great works of poetry, sprinkled throughout the pages, illustrating points and providing inspiration. To top it all off, the last two hundred pages of the book are an anthology of great poetry. The resource is amazing simply for the anthology. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning how to write better, either poetry or something else. There is much to be learned from these pages.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WESTERN WIND IS ESSENTIAL FOR ASPIRING POETS, November 28, 2005

By 

Possum-Bread (Pasadena, California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry (Paperback)

Western Wind by John Nims and David Mason is the only textbook I've ever felt passionate about. I cannot imagine a better foundation for an introduction to poetic verse. Western Wind is a well-written, thorough and astonishingly sophisticated book. It has a depth of consideration of the technical features of poetry that most anthologies lack. The authors demystify poetic structure and syntax by using a wide range of poets from diverse traditions and time periods.

Western Wind's explanations of the elements of poetry are thought provoking and relevant for aspiring poets and seasoned writers alike. It offers a practicing poet's perspective on selection, organization, titles, phrasing and commentary. Although the book covers the mechanics thoroughly, it never lets the reader forget that poetry is an art. This is a solid, intelligent book and I highly recommend it to all aspiring poets.