An award-winning poet, teacher, and “champion of poetry” (Neil Genzlinger, New York Times) demystifies the elusive element of voice. In this accessible and distilled craft guide, acclaimed poet Tony Hoagland approaches poetry through the frame of poetic voice, that mysterious connective element that binds the speaker and reader together. In short, essayistic chapters and an appendix of thirty stimulating exercises, The Art of Voice explores the myriad ways to create a distinctive poetic voice, including vernacular, authoritative statement, speech register, tone-shifting, and using secondary voices. “Rich with lively examples” (New York Times Book Review), The Art of Voice provides a compelling introduction to contemporary poetry and an invaluable guide for any practicing writer.

Though it is foundational to the craft of writing, the concept of voice is a mystery to many authors, and teachers of writing do not have a good working definition of it for use in the classroom. Written to address the vague and problematic advice given to writers to "find their voice," Voice First: A Writer's Manifesto recasts the term in the plural to give writers options, movement, and a way to understand the development of voice over time. By redefining "voice," Sonya Huber offers writers an opportunity not only to engage their voices but to understand and experience how developing their range of voices strengthens their writing. Weaving together in-depth discussions of various concepts of voice and stories from the author's writing life, Voice First offers a personal view of struggles with voice as influenced and shaped by gender, place of origin, privilege, race, ethnicity, and other factors, reframing and updating the conversation for the twenty-first century. Each chapter includes writing prompts and explores a different element of voice, helping writers at all levels stretch their concept of voice and develop a repertoire of voices to summon.

The ultimate writing guide that is "a helping hand to anyone who dreams of telling their truth through words on a page.” —Ellen Bass, author of Indigo "[This book] gives us endless ways to access our creative selves and shows us how to shape our experiences into poetry...This book reassured me that we all have the capacity to create something beautiful.'" —Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, author of Children of the Land Ever had an emotion or experience you wanted to express, but didn't know how? This guide by Patrice Vecchione encourages new writers of all ages to find their voices, step up and speak their truths, and articulate what matters to them most—both personally and politically—whether it be boldly to an outside audience or just privately for themselves. Young adults are reading and writing and performing poetry more than ever before. Written in short, easy-to-digest chapters by the editor of Ink Knows No Borders, My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice includes prompts and inspiration, writing suggestions and instruction, brief interviews with some current popular poets such as Kim Addonizio, Safia Elhillo, and others, and poem excerpts scattered throughout the book. My Shouting, Shattered Whispering Voice offers ways to express rage, frustration, joy, and sorrow, and to substitute apathy with creativity, usurp fear with daring, counteract anxiety with the joy of writing one word down and then another to express vital, but previously unarticulated, thoughts. Most importantly, here you can discover the value of your own voice and come to believe that what you have to say matters.

Music, Lyrics, and Life is the songwriting class you always wish you'd taken, taught by the professor you always wish you'd had. It's a deep dive into the heart of questions asked by songwriters of all levels, from how to begin journaling to when you know that a song is finished. With humor and empathy, acclaimed singer-songwriter Mike Errico unravels both the mystery of songwriting and the logistics of life as a songwriter. For years, this set of tools, prompts, and ideas has inspired students on campuses including Yale, Wesleyan, Berklee, Oberlin, and NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. Alongside his own lessons, Errico interviews the writers, producers, and A&R executives behind today's biggest hits and investigates the larger questions of creativity through lively conversations with a wide range of innovative thinkers: astrophysicist Janna Levin explains the importance of repetition, both in choruses and in the exploration of the universe; renowned painter John Currin praises the constraints of form, whether it's within a right-angled canvas or a three-minute pop song; bestselling author George Saunders unpacks the hidden benefit of writing, and revising, authentically; and much more. The result is that Music, Lyrics, and Life ends up revealing as much about the art of songwriting as it does about who we are, and where we may be going. This is a book for songwriters, future content creators, music lovers, and anyone who wants to understand how popular art forms are able to touch us so deeply. Mike Errico has honed these lessons over years of writing, performing, teaching, and mentoring, and no matter where you are on your songwriting journey, Music, Lyrics, and Life will help you build a creative world that's both intrinsic to who you are, and undeniable to whoever is listening.

The final book of poems by Tony Hoagland, “one of the most distinctive voices of our time” (Carl Dennis). Over the course of his celebrated career, Tony Hoagland ventured fearlessly into the unlit alleys of emotion and experience. The poems in Turn Up the Ocean examine with an unflinching eye and mordant humor the reality of living and dying in a time and culture that conspire to erase our inner lives. Hoagland’s signature wit and unparalleled observations take in long-standing injustices, the atrocities of American empire and consumerism, and our ongoing habit of looking away. In these poems, perseverance depends on a gymnastics of skepticism and comedy, a dogged quest for authentic connection, and the consolations of the natural world. Turn Up the Ocean is a remarkable and moving collection, a fitting testament to Hoagland’s devotion to the capaciousness and art of poetry.

The central theme here is the constant confrontation of theory and practice in the work of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Valéry.

Great poets like Shelley and Goethe have made the claim that translating poems is impossible. And yet, poems are translated; not only that, but the metrical systems of English, French, Italian, German, Russian and Czech have been shaped by the translation of poems. Our poetic traditions are inspired by translations of Homer, Dante, Goethe and Baudelaire. How can we explain this paradox? James W. Underhill responds by offering an informed account of meter, rhythm, rhyme, and versification. But more than that, the author stresses that what is important in the poem—and what must be preserved in the translated poem—is the voice that emerges in the versification. Underhill’s book draws on the author’s translation experience from French, Czech and German. His comparative analysis of the versifications of French and English have enabled him to revise the key terms involved in translating the poetic voice and transposing the poem’s versification. The theories of versification from the Prague School of Linguistics, the French and Swiss schools of versification, and recent scholarship in metrics and rhythm in the UK and in the USA have been integrated into this synthetic but rigorously coherent approach to translating poems. The extensive glossary at the end of the book will prove useful for both students and teachers alike. And the detailed case studies on translating poems by Baudelaire and Emily Dickinson allow the author to categorize and appraise the various poetic and aesthetic strategies and theories that are brought to bear in translating Baudelaire into English, and Dickinson into French.

A selection of modern French poems with critical commentary, glossary of literary terms, biographies and bibliography.

Wallace Stevens’s musicality is so profound that scholars have only begun to grasp his ties to the art of music or the music of his own poetry. In this study, two long-time specialists present a polyphonic composition in which they pursue various interlocking perspectives. Their case studies demonstrate how music as a temporal art form may affect a poetic of ephemerality, sensuous experience, and affective intensification. Such a poetic, they argue, invites flexible interpretations that respond to poetry as an art of textual performance. How did Stevens enact the relation between music and memory? How can we hear his verse as a form of melody-making? What was specific to his ways of recording birdsong? Have we been missing the latent music of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Claude Debussy in particular poems? What were the musical poetics he shared with Igor Stravinsky? And how is our experience of the late poetry transformed when we listen to a musical setting by Ned Rorem? The Poetic Music of Wallace Stevens will appeal to experts in the poet’s work, students of Modernism in the arts, and a wider audience fascinated by the dynamics of exchange between music and poetry.