A FIELD Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics: Revised Edition

Marc Notes: A collection of essays which originally appeared in Field magazine--T.p. verso. Review Quotes: "An illuminating and inspiring guide to poetry, not simply as an art form, but also as a way of life."Table of Contents: PrefaceTHE PROCESS OF WRITINGA Way of Writing -- William StaffordWork and Inspiration: Inviting the Muse -- Denise LevertovPoetic Process? -- Margaret AtwoodGoatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird: The Psychic Origins of Poetic Form -- Donald HallReflections on the Origins of Poetic Form -- Robert BlyPortrait of the Writer as a Fat Man: Some Subjective Ideas or Notions on the Care & Feeding of Prose Poems -- Russell EdsonPoetry and Science: The Science of Poetry/The Poetry of Science -- Miroslav HolubGorky Street: Syntax and Context -- Dennis SchmitzThe Two-Tone Line, Blues Ideology, and the Scrap Quilt -- Sandra McPhersonTHE POETIC LINE: A SYMPOSIUMThe Working Line -- Sandra McPhersonA Response to "The Working Line" -- James WrightFurther Reflections on Line and the Poetic Voice -- John HainesThe Line -- Donald HallSome Thoughts about Lines -- Shirley KaufmanA Note on Prose, Verse and the Line -- William MatthewsSome Thoughts about the Line -- Charles SimicTHE IMAGE: A SYMPOSIUMImage and "Images" -- Charles SimicNotes on the Image: Body and Soul -- Donald Hall Recognizing the Image as a Form of Intelligence -- Robert BlyImage and Language -- Russell EdsonNoun/Object/Image -- Marvin BellPOETRY AND VALUESSome Remarks on "Literature and Reality" -- Gunter EichMeanings of Poetry -- Jean FollainPoetry, Community & Climax -- Gary SnyderSome Notes on the Gazer Within -- Larry LevisThe Bite of the Muskrat: Judging Contemporary Poetry -- David YoungNot Your Flat Tire, My Flat Tire: Transcending the Self in Contemporary Poetry -- Alberta TurnerStone Soup: Contemporary Poetry and the Obsessive Image -- David WalkerLanguage: The Poet as Master and Servant -- David YoungSecond Honeymoon: Some Thoughts on Translation -- David YoungHere and There: The Use of Place in Contemporary Poetry -- Shirley KaufmanEden and My Generation -- Larry LevisA Taxable Matter -- C. D. WrightPORTRAITS AND SELF-PORTRAITSUrgent Masks: An Introduction to John Ashbery's Poetry -- David ShapiroPoetry, Personality and Death -- Galway KinnellPoetry, Personality and Wholeness: A Response to Galway Kinnell -- Adrienne RichCharles Wright at Oberlin -- Charles WrightSecrets: Beginning to Write Them Out -- Sandra McPhersonLessons in Form -- Laura JensenBody and Soul: Three Poets on Their MaladiesCharles Simic: My Insomnia and IShirley Kaufman: Backache, Poemache, and BotzLee Upton: The Closest WorkNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgments

Contributor Bio:  Friebert, Stuart STUART FRIEBERT has published 11 books of poems in English and German; he is widely known as the co-editor of Oberlin College Press: Field; and other collections. He has taught at Oberlin College since 1961, and directs the Oberlin Writing Program. He has also won a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. Contributor Bio:  Walker, David David Walker was born in or near Wilmington, North Carolina, the son of a slave father and a free black mother (thus, under the laws of slavery, he was born free). the year of his birth is uncertain, although the most convincing recent research contends that it was 1796 or 1797. By his own account in the "Appeal," Walker left Wilmington as a young man and wandered around the United States, residing for an unspecified period in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1825, he turned up as a used-clothes dealer in Boston, where he would spend the rest of his abbreviated life. He died suddenly in 1830. Sean Wilentz is the Cotsen Fellow and professor of history at Princeton University. His books include "Chants Democratic" and, with Paul E. Johnson, "The Kingdom of Matthias,"Contributor Bio:  Young, David DAVID YOUNG journeys from his front porch halfway across the globe and back to his Ohio home in the circuit marked by Foraging. His emphasis is on our mortality and survival; ghosts and mushrooms (hence the title) are central poetic images; wild mushrooms of an odd beauty--variegated, unpredictable, delicious, poisonous, hallucinogenic--taking their life from decay, recyclers of matter, rather as poets are. He sees nature as a haunted house, and as a presence whose meaning fascinates and eludes us. Some of his poems are spoken by ghosts, others addressed to ghosts--for example, the elegy for James Wright, which invites his spirit to return to his native Ohio.