BOOKS ON CRAFT AND THE WRITING LIFE

Craft (Fiction)

Auden, W.H.. Dyer's Hand .

Barth, John. “The Literature of Exhaustion” ( Atlantic 1967)

Baxter, Charles, & Peter Turchi, eds. Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life.

Bell , Madison Smart. Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form .

Bernays, Anne. What If: Exercises for Fiction Writers .

Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961, 1983; Selections)

Borges, Jorge Luis. Borges on Writing .

Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren , Understanding Fiction .

Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction .

Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing: the Elements of Craft (multigenre).

Busch, Frederick. Letters to a Fiction Writer .

Checkoway, Julie, Ed. Creating Fiction .

Chekhov, Anton. Notebooks .

Conrad, Joseph. Introduction to The Nigger of the Narcissus .

Cixous, Helene. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing .

Connolly, Cyril. Enemies of Promise .

Flaubert, Gustave, and George Sand. Flaubert-Sand: A Correspondence .

Forster, E. M.. Aspects of the Novel (1927)

Franzen, Jonathan. How To Be Alone: Essays . (including “Perchance to Dream,” the 1996 Harper's article)

Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction .

Gardner, John. On Moral Fiction (1978)

Gardner, John. On Becoming A Novelist .

Hardwick, Elizabeth. American Fictions .

James, Henry. “The Art of Fiction” (1888)

King, Stephen. On Writing .

Krim, Seymour. “The American Novel Made Me” ( Playboy 1968)

Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction .

Madden, David. Revising Fiction .

Mamet, David. Three Uses of the Knife .

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992).

O'Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners (1961)

Roth, Philip. “Writing American Fiction” [ Reading Myself and Others (1975)]

Steinbeck, John. Journal of a Novel (on the writing of East of Eden ).

Stern, Jerome. Making Shapely Fiction.

Stern, Jerome. Microfiction .

Tolstoy, Leo. “What is Art?”

Wallace, David Foster. “ E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997)

Welty, Eudora. The Eye of the Story .

Welty, Eudora. One Writer's Beginnings .

Willis, Meredith Sue. Personal Fiction Writing .

Woolf , Virginia . Writer's Diary .

Craft (Creative Nonfiction)

D'Agata, John. The Next American Essay .

Forche, Carolyn and Philip Gerard, Eds. Writing Creative Nonfiction: Instruction and Insights from Teachers of the AWP .

Root, Robert L. and Michael Steinberg. The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on CreativeNonfiction .

Craft (Poetry)

Addonizio, Kim and Dorriane Laux. The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry .

Allen, Donald M., & Warren Tallman, eds., The Poetics of the New American Poetry (1973)

Andrews, Bruce, & Charles Bernstein, eds., The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (1984)

Aristotle. Poetics .

Ashbery, John. Other Traditions .

Bakhtin, MM. The Dialogic Imagination

Bartlett , Lee, ed. Talking Poetry. (1987)

Behn, Robin and Chase Twitchell, Eds. The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach .

Bellamy, Joe David. American Poetry Observed . (1984)

Bernstein, Charles. A Poetics .

Bernstein, Charles. “Artifice of Absorption,” A Poetics (1992).

Bernstein, Charles. Content's Dream .

Bernstein, Charles, ed. The Politics of Poetic Form. (1990)

Berry, Wendell. “Standing By Words” (1979).

Bly, Robert. “What the Image Can Do.”

Boruch, Marianne. Poetry's Old Air . (a Poets on Poetry book)

Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren , Understanding Poetry .

Carruth, Hayden. Effluences from the Sacred Caves .

Carruth, Hayden. Working Papers .

Celan, Paul. Collected Prose .

Chappell, Fred. Plow Naked .

Clampitt, Amy. Predecessors, Etcetera .

Corn, Alfred. The Poem's Heartbeat .

Dembo, L.S. & Cyrena Pondrom, eds., The Contemporary Writer (1972)

Dennis, Carl. Poetry as Persuasion .

Dickey, James. Babel to Byzantium .

Dunn, Stephen. Walking Light .

Eberhart, Richard. Of Poetry And Poets .

Eliot, T.S. “The Music of Poetry.”

Faas, Ekbert ed., Towards a New American Poetics (1978) (interviews)

Foster, Edward ed., Postmodern Poetry: The Talisman Interviews (1994) (interviews)

Fulton, Alice . Feeling as a Foreign Language .

Gibbons, Reginald, ed. The Poet's Work . (1979)

Gluck, Louise. Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry . (Especially recommend “Education of the Poet.”)

Hall, Donald, ed. Claims for Poety . (Anthology of essays on craft from super varied perspectives. Essays themselves in a wacky variety of forms. Recommend Denise Levertov's “On the Function of the Line.”)

Hall , Donald . Death to the Death Of Poetry .

Hall , Donald . Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird . (a Poets on Poetry book)

Hall , Donald . Poetry and Ambition .

Hall , Donald . Remembering Poets .

Hass, Robert. Twentieth Century Pleasures .

Heaney, Seamus. The Redress of Poetry . (Beautiful prose. Printed version of lectures given at Oxford . Various topics, variously useful depending upon reader's interests. Best and most universally useful is “Joy or Night: Last Things in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats and Phillip Larkin.”)

Hejinian, Lyn. The Language of Inquiry .

Hejinian, Lyn. “The Rejection of Closure.” Poetics Journal 1984.

Hirsch, Edward. How to Read A Poem .

Hugo, Richard. The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing .

Jarman, Mark. Body and Soul .

Keats, John. Letters .

Kinnell, Galway . Walking Down the Stairs .

Kirby, David. What is a Book? (essays).

Koch, Kenneth. Making Your Own Days .

Koch, Kenneth. Rose Where Did You Get That Red? (for children, but useful in classes)

Kowitt, Steve. In the Palm of Your Hand: the Poet's Portable Workshop .

Kumin, Maxine. To Make A Prairie .

Lammon, Martin. Written in Water, Written in Stone: Twenty Years of Poets on Poetry .

Lehman, David, Ed. Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms . (80-some poets choose their favorite poems and discuss the form...in some cases the form is pretty abstract, in others more technical, but almost all are good exercises)

Levertov, Denise. “Some Notes Toward Organic Form.” ( Poetry 1965).

Levine, Philip. Don't Ask .

Levine, Philip. The Bread Of Time .

Mariani, Paul. God and the Imagination: On Poets, Poetry, and the Ineffable .

Matthews, Harry, and Alastair Brotchie. Eds., Oulipo Compendium . (Oulipo experiments)

McQuade, Molly ed., By Herself (2000)

Meltzer, David, ed. San Francisco Beat. (2001)

Myers, Jack and David Wojahn, eds. A Profile of 20th Century American Poetry . (This book is fabulous if you need to get a grip on the history, context & development of 20th century poetics. There's a chapter on each decade by a different poet. Everything you ever wanted to know about the literary “movements” of this century, but were afraid to ask.)

Nims, John Frederick. A Local Habitation . (a Poets on Poetry book)

Nims, John Frederick, and David Mason. Western Wind .

Oliver, Mary. Rules for the Dance .

Olson, Charles. Call Me Ishmael .

Olson, Charles. “Projective Verse.”

Orr, Gregory. Poetry as Survival .

Orr, Gergory, & Ellen Bryant Voigt, eds. Poets Teaching Poets: Self and the World .

Ossman, David ed., The Sullen Art (1963) (interviews)

Packard, William, ed. The Craft of Poetry. (1974)

Palmer, Michael ed., Code of Signals (1983)

Perelman, Bob. The Marginalization of Poetry .

Perelman, Bob, ed. Writing/Talks. (1985)

Perkins, George, ed. American Poetic Theory. (1972)

Perloff, Marjorie. Radical Artifice .

Pinsky, Robert. The Sounds of Poetry .

Rasula, Jed. The American Poetry Wax Museum .

Rasula, Jed. This Compost .

Roethke, Theodore. Straw For The Fire .

Santos , Sherod. A Poetry of Two Minds .

Simic, Charles. The Uncertain Certainty .

Simic, Charles. Wonderful Words, Silent Truth .

Simic, Charles. The Unemployed Fortune-teller .

Sontag, Kate and David Graham, eds. After Confession: Poetry As Autobiography .

Stafford, Kim. The Muses Among Us .

Stafford, William. Walking the Australian Crawl . (a Poets on Poetry book)

Stein, Gertrude. How to Write .

Spender, Stephen. World Within World .

Stevens, Wallace, The Necessary Angel .

Voigt, Ellen Bryant. The Flexible Lyric .

Waldman, Anne & Andrew Schelling, eds., Disembodied Poetics . (1994)

Waldman, Anne & Marilyn Webb, eds., Talking Poetics from Naropa Institute --2 vols. (1978)

Wallace, Mark & Steven Marks, eds., Telling it Slant (2002)

Wallace, Robert, and Michelle Boisseau. Writing Poems .

Whitman, Walt. “Slang in America .” November Boughs.

Williams, Miller & John Ciardi. How Does a Poem Mean?

Wright, Charles. Halflife .

Arana, Marie, Ed. The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work: A Collection from the Washington Post Book World .

Blake, William. Letters .

Cameron, Julia. The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life .

Corey, Stephen and Warren Slesinger. Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry .

Crews, Harry. Florida Frenzy .

Dienstfrey, Patricia and Brenda Hillman, Eds. The Grand Permission: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood .

Dillard, Annie. An American Childhood .

Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim At Tinker Creek .

Dodd, Wayne. Toward The End Of The Century .

Dunn, Stephen. Walking Light .

Erdrich, Louise. The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year .

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Crack-Up.

Goffstein, M.B. A Writer (children's story).

Kallet, Marilyn and Judith Ortiz Cofer, Eds. Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival .

Kuusisto, Stephen, et al. The Poet's Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Contemporary American Poets .

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Advice on Writing and Life .

Poets on Poetry series from the University of Michigan Press .

McAlexander, Hubert. Peter Taylor: A Writer's Life .

Moyers, Bill. Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and their Craft . Interviews with various poets and samples of their work.

Oates, Joyce Carol. The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art .

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet .

Walker, Alice . In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens .

Woolf , Virginia . A Room of One's Own .

Fiction, Poetry, Creative Nonfiction / Other

Becker, Geoff. Dangerous Men . (fiction)

Best American Series ( Best American Poetry, Best American Fiction , etc.)

Betts, Doris. Beasts of the Southern Wild . (fiction)

Carver, Raymond. Cathedral . (fiction)

Chicago Manual of Style .

Earley, Tony. Here We Are in Paradise . (fiction)

Goldstein, Rebecca. Strange Attractors. Also The Dark Sister . (fiction)

Gluck, Louise. Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry .

Hacker, Diana. A Writer's Reference .

Handbook of Poetic Forms (reference)

Hillman, James. The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling . (psychology, human development)

Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property .

Kitchen, Judith, and Mary Paumier Jones, eds. In Short . (very brief nonfiction)

Moore, Lorrie. Self-Help . (fiction)

Munro, Alice . (fiction)

Myers, D.G. The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880 . (about the teaching of c.w.)

Nugent, Beth. City of Boys . (fiction)

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried . (fiction)

Pushcart Prize Stories . (series)

Stone, Robert. Outerbridge Reach . (fiction)

Strunk, William, and E.B. White. The Elements of Style .

Swick, Mary. Monogamy . (fiction)

Taylor, Peter. The Old Forest and Other Stories . (fiction)

Tolstoya, Tatyana. Sleepwalker in the Fog . (fiction)

Wakoski, Diane. Toward a New Poetry . (essays)

Wideman, John Edgar. Fever . (fiction)

Wong, Louie David. Pangs of Love . (fiction)

UGA CWP Faculty Books

Cofer, Judith Ortiz. Call Me Maria . (novel in prose & poetry)

The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry

The Line of the Sun (novel)

The Meaning of Consuelo . (novel)

Reaching for the Mainland (poetry)

Riding in the Streets of Gold: Latino Literature for Young Adults . (collection, ed. by JOC)

Silent Dancing (essays and poetry)

Terms of Survival (poetry)

Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer (creative nonfiction on craft)

The Year of Our Revolution: New and Selected Stories and Poems

Henry, Brian. Astronaut . (poetry)

American Incident . (poetry)

Graft . (poetry)

On James Tate . (essay collection, ed. by BH)

Quarantine . (poetry)

Verse. (literary journal, ed. by BH)

Hood, Mary. And Venus Is Blue . (stories)

How Far She Went . (stories)

Familiar Heat . (novel)

McKnight, Reginald. Wisdom of the African World (Classic Wisdom Collection) . (collection, ed. by RM)

He Sleeps . (novel)

I Get On the Bus . (novel)

The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas . (stories)

Moustapha's Eclipse . (stories)

White Boys . (stories)

Rankine, Claudia. American Women Poets in the 21st Century (2002) (ed., with Juliana Spahr)

The End of the Alphabet . (poetry)

Nothing in Nature is Private . (poetry)

PLOT . (poetry)

Rasula, Jed. The American Poetry Wax Museum (1996)

Imagining Language (with Steve McCaffery) (1998, paperback edition 2001)

This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry (2002)

Syncopations: Contemporary American Poetry and the Stress of Innovation (forthcoming)

Tabula Rasula (poetry)

Williams, Philip Lee.

A Distant Flame

All the Western Stars

Blue Crystal

Crossing Wildcat Ridge

Final Heat

The Heart of a Distant Forest

Perfect Timing

The Silent Stars Go By

Slow Dance in Autumn

Song of Daniel

The True and Authentic History of Jenny Dorset

home