Singing School: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters
€œMagnificent . . . poems to inspire [with] brief and brilliant, offhand notes about how to read them.€Â€"Alan Cheuse, NPR
Robert Pinsky€s headnotes for each of the 80 poems and his brief introductions to each section take a writer€s view of specific works: William Carlos Williams€s €œFine Work with Pitch and Copper€ for intense verbal music; Emily Dickinson€s €œBecause I Could Not Stop for Death€ for wild imagination in matter-of-fact language; Robert Southwell€s €œThe Burning Babe€ for surrealist aplomb; Wallace Stevens€s €œThe House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm€ for subtlety in meter. Included are poems by Aphra Behn, Allen Ginsberg, George Herbert, John Keats, Mina Loy, Thomas Nashe, and many other master poets.
This anthology respects poetry€s mysteries in two senses of the word: techniques of craft and strokes of the inexplicable.