Prose
The best (and worst) books on the technical aspects of writing poems. For any poet wishing to get a deeper grasp of the tools and materials of the craft, these books offer advanced ideas you can work with to the point they become ingrained habits of ear and mind.
Prose by others
Lost, forgotten and obscure works that are important to me and are unnecessarily hard to find.
by Robert Frost
Why and how should poetry be taught? What good is poetry to an education, or to a people? In this talk at Amherst College in 1931, American poet Robert Frost asserts a critical role for poetry as an education in metaphor, and he warns against the customs by which poetry is taught that sidestep its unique ability to develop a student’s capacity for multidimensional thinking.
written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati
by George Gascoigne
The very first how-to manual for writing poetry in English, written in 1575, offers advice on metaphor, diction, meter, and form that can still apply nearly five centuries later. For the first time, this seminal text has been made accessible to the modern reader with updated spelling and typography and translations of Latin phrases and idiomatic expressions.