A Poetry Handbook : A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry

A Poetry Handbook : A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry
ISBN: 9780156724005
Publication Date: 29 July 1994

With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poet Mary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter and rhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems from Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts an extraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space. "Stunning" (Los Angeles Times). Index.

About the Author

Born in a small town in Ohio, Mary Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of twenty-three.

Over the course of her long career, she has received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award in 1984. She has led workshops and held residencies at various colleges and universities, including Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching.

In 2007 The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet." She died in January 2019