A five-time teaching award winner and author of 35 books, David Kirby has written a lively and inviting guide to writing poetry for college students. The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them, utilizes Kirby’s hospitable, inspirational, and expert voice to help students learn the complex, playful, and meditative art form of poetry.
The book’s four sections (‘How to Write a Poem, ‘ ‘How to Write a Really Good Poem, ‘ ‘Immortality is Within Your Grasp, ‘ and ‘You Graphomaniac, You’) are staggered to gradually build student confidence and skill, and include works from over 70 poets-including Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Marilyn Nelson, Franny Choi, Emily Dickinson, and Natalie Diaz-to illuminate key points and spur student reflection and writing.
The Knowledge, writes Kirby, helps students craft poems the way Jimi Hendrix talked about making music-‘Learn everything, forget it, and play.’ Each chapter is brimming with tips and suggestions for writing great poems, and concludes with summative talking points and dozens of unique prompts to nudge students to contribute to an art form that is ‘thrumming with life.’
Mengenai Pengarang
DAVID KIRBY, is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University. He has received many honors for his work, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and his work appears frequently in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize volumes. Kirby is the author of numerous books, including The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award in poetry. His Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll was named one of Booklist’s Top 10 Black History Non-Fiction Books of 2010, and the Times Literary Supplement called it ‘a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.’