“Join Heller on her quest to help save the world, one poet at a time.” — from the foreword by Susan G. Wooldridge Write a Poem, Save Your Life helps writers of all ages and experience levels navigate their way through all aspects of life. With writing prompts, tools, encouragement, and moving student examples, Meredith Heller gently guides us in the art of using poetry to figure out who we are and what matters to us and to heal the deeper issues many of us face, such as depression, addiction, health and body image issues, low self-esteem, trauma, gender and sexual identity issues, and home and family problems. Along the way, we learn that writing poems helps us believe in ourselves, make positive life choices, and find direction, purpose, and meaning.

"An unconventional and inventive coming-of-age memoir organized around forty-three remarkable poems by poets such as Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens and Sylvia Plath ... For Jill Bialosky, certain poems stand out like signposts at pivotal moments in a life: the death of a father, adolescence, first love, leaving home, the suicide of a sister, marriage, the birth of a child, the day in New York City the Twin Towers fell ... she illuminates the ways in which particular poems offered insight, compassion, and connection, and shows how poetry can be a blueprint for living"--

Write to Explore and Express the Wild Beauty of Your Heart Meredith Heller invites you to write as a path toward self-understanding and as a lifelong refuge of steadfast friendship with yourself. She used the power of writing to heal and save her own life, and now she teaches others to do the same. In this book, Meredith shares the techniques she developed to help people from all walks of life explore their emotions, find their voice, and better navigate life’s challenges. Filled with potent exercises and inspiring poems from the author and her students, Writing by Heart is a must-read for anyone, from seasoned writer to novice, who wants to discover the transformative power of writing.

This textbook teaches the writing of poetry by examining all the major verse forms and repeating stanza forms in English. It provides students with the tools to compose successful lines of poetry and focuses on meter (including free verse), rhythm, rhyme, and the many other tools a poet needs to create both music and meaningfulness in an artful poem. Presenting copious examples from strong poets of the past and present along with many recent student examples, all of which are scanned, each chapter offers lessons in poetic history and the practice of writing verse, along with giving students a structured opportunity to experiment writing in all the forms discussed. In Part 1, Rothman and Spear begin at the beginning, with Anglo-Saxon Strong Stress Alliterative Meter and examine every major meter in English, up to and including the free verse forms of modern and contemporary poetry. Part 2 presents a close examination of stanza forms that moves from the simple to the complex, beginning with couplets and ending with the 14-line Eugene Onegin stanza. The goal of the book is to give students the essential skills to understand how any line of poetry in English may have been composed, the better to enjoy them and then also write their own: the keys to the treasure chest. Rothman and Spear present a rigorous curriculum that teaches the craft of poetry through a systematic examination and practice of the major English meters and verse forms. Under their guidance, students hone their craft while studying the rich traditions and innovations of poets writing in English. Suitable for high school students and beyond. I studied with Rothman in graduate school and went through this course with additional scholarly material. This book will help students develop a keen ear for the music of the English language.—Teow Lim Goh, author of Islanders

"The author tells her story of "personal knowing from walking the path of mother grief," while establishing a background that guides the reader through the steps and archetypes that mark the process of mourning. Through personal experience, myth, and stories, she shows how one can gain a renewed sense of inner and outer wholeness in life" -- publisher website (November 2006).

In everything we have to understand, poetry can help. Tony Hoagland, Harper's , April 2013 In Poem Central: Word Journeys with Readers and Writers , Shirley McPhillips helps us better understand the central role poetry can play in our personal lives and in the life of our classrooms. She introduces us to professional poets, teachers, and students----people of different ages and walks of life---who are actively engaged in reading and making poems. Their stories and their work show us the power of poems to illuminate the ordinary, to nurture, inspire and stand alongside us for the journey. Poem Central is divided into three main parts-;weaving poetry into our lives and our classrooms, reading poems, and writing poems. McPhillipshas structured the book in short sections that are easy to read and dip into. Each section has a specific focus, provides background knowledge, shows poets at work, highlights information on crafting, defines poetic terms, features finished work, includes classroom examples, and lists additional resources. In Poem Central -; a place where people and poems meet-;teachers and students will discover how to find their way into a poem, have conversations around poems, and learn fresh and exciting ways to make poems. Readers will enjoy the dozens of poems throughout the book that serve to instruct, to inspire, and to send us on unique word journeys of the mind and heart.