Finger Exercises for Poets

Poet Laux (Only as the Day Is Long) sets forth an edifying meditation on the craft of poetry. Each chapter highlights a literary technique used by a well-known author and provides exercises helping readers incorporate them into their own work. For instance, Laux examines how Larry Levis uses tree imagery to anchor the “discursive narrative” in his poem “Adolescence” and encourages readers to choose an image that speaks to them (“Is it a knife, is it a wheel?”) and write about it until one discovers the “metaphorical, mystical, [or] mythical” reason it resonates. Studying how poets create meaning through contrast, Laux contends that Li-Young Lee’s “One Heart” emphasizes its final couplet by including a three-syllable word in a poem otherwise dominated by single-syllable words. To practice Lee’s technique, Laux suggests readers compose an eight-line poem exclusively from brief words, except for a single three- or four-syllable word that draws attention to the poem’s emotional crux. Other chapters on Sappho, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Kwame Dawes, among others, expound on writing political poetry, discovering “new ways of looking at everyday things,” and moving between the literal and metaphorical. Laux’s close readings of celebrated poems, most of which are reproduced in full, reveal what makes them tick, and the exercises will help get the creative juices flowing. Aspiring poets would do well to check this out. (July)