The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets

Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets—aspiring or practicing—can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry’s ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts. Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend—a friend who is willing to share everything he’s learned about the art he’s spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.

• A Poetry Handbook
• Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse
• Delights & Shadows
• The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing
• Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry
• The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry
• The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach
• The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
• Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words
• Kindest Regards: New and Selected