Perfect for Poets

Three of our EIL poets have been busy in 2013 creating books that might inspire poets in 2014, so keep these two craft-related books in mind for gifts as you do your holiday shopping this season.

Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano teamed up to provide daily prompts for poets in The Daily Poet (Two Sylvias Press, 2013). It’s set up calendar style like a book of daily meditations, but the authors suggest in their short introduction that you should feel free to skip around. Each prompt is only a short paragraph long and is sometimes linked to an event on that particular day. For instance, today, December 13, is the birthday of poet James Wright, so the prompt is to “write an ode to a natural object in the spirit of his ‘To the Saguaro Cactus Tree in the Desert Rain.’” When there’s a linkable poem connected to the prompt, the authors provide it, as in this case, where the poem can be found at Poets.org. Anticipating your activities on Monday, December 16, the poets provided the prompt of a Mall Visit, so, if you go to the mall, take notes and write a poem!

Diane Lockward provides model poems, prompts, interviews, and tips to generate new work and to break through writer’s block in The Crafty Poet (Wind Publications, 2013). This one is sort of a combined anthology and workshop in one. Delightfully, it comes recommended by Agodon and Silano in friendly blurbs at Amazon! Silano and Richard Jones, another EIL poet, are also contributors to the Lockward book.

You’ll find more information at the publisher links below, and you can get both books at Amazon if you were actually hoping to avoid a Mall Visit. (You can write your “mall visit” poem about avoidance!)

Kelli Russell Agodon at Escape Into Life

Martha Silano at Escape Into Life

Diane Lockward at Escape Into Life

The Daily Poet at Two Sylvias Press

The Crafty Poet at Wind Publications