Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner and one of the most celebrated poets of our time. In A Poetry Handbook, Oliver imparts some of her wisdom and impressions about poetry -- everything from the basics of building a poem to how form and diction work. The chapter on revision alone makes this one worth it, but Oliver's look at the works of such luminaries as Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop adds immeasurable value.

National Book Award winner Oliver ( New and Selected Poems ) delivers with uncommon concision and good sense that paradoxical thing: a prose guide to writing poetry. Her discussion may be of equal interest to poetry readers and beginning or experienced writers. She's neither a romantic nor a mechanic, but someone who has observed poems and their writing closely and who writes with unassuming authority about the work she and others do, interspersing history and analysis with exemplary poems (the poets include James Wright, William Carlos Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore and Walt Whitman). Divided into short chapters on sound, the line, imagery, tone, received forms and free verse, the book also considers the need for revision (an Oliver poem typically passes through 40 or 50 drafts before it is done) and the pros and cons of writing workshops. And though her prose is wisely spare, a reader also falls gladly on signs of a poet: ``Who knows anyway what it is, that wild, silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live?'' or ``Poems begin in experience, but poems are not in fact experience . . . they exist in order to be poems.'' (July)

Late in his career, William Butler Yeats urged fellow poets to learn their craft. Heeding his advice, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Oliver (New and Selected Poems, LJ 10/92) provides an excellent handbook for young poets on the formal aspects and structure of poetry. Oliver excels at explaining the sound and sense of poetry-from scansion to imagery, diction to voice. She stresses the importance of reading poetry, since, in order to write well, ``it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply.'' Sage advice is given in an entire chapter dedicated to revision, wherein Oliver urges poets to consider their first draft ``an unfinished piece of work'' that can be polished and improved later. Written in a pleasant and lucid style, this book is a wonderful resource for teachers of poetry. Highly recommended for all school libraries.-Tim Gavin, Episcopal Acad., Merion, Pa.

[A] stunning little handbook.”

The best poets get that way because they have given a great deal of thought to questions such as: "What is poetry?" "How does it get that way?" Mary Oliver was one of those best poets, and in this audio version of her classic work about how to write and read poetry she offers some answers, both detailed and expansive, to John Ciardi's classic question: "How does a poem mean?" Kimberly Farr's performance is wonderful, as witty and wise as the text. Her readings of the many poems (and pieces of poems) are clear and sensitive to the reasons Oliver has quoted them. The list of books about writing poetry that are truly useful is a short one, but this has earned its place on it, and this superb performance makes it even better. D.M.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine