Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem is grounded in the belief that the best way to learn to write poetry - and improve one's writing in general - is through practice. The book's unique approach - teaching the elements of poetry through various poetic forms - encourages students to learn from existing models and to break free from pre-established constraints. In thirteen chapters centered on the sonnet, the haiku, and other traditional and not-so-traditional forms, the author demonstrates through numerous innovative exercises the many ways in which beginning poets can enrich their writing by studying and practicing poetic form.

Table of Contents:
(Each chapter contains Reading into Writing, Invention Exercises, and Pocket Definitions.) Preface. Ars Poetica, Rita Dove. Ars Poetica, Archibald MacLeish. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Wallace Stevens. Ways of Looking at Wallace Stevens, Hans Ostrom. Stone, Charles Simic. A Guide to the Stone Age, James Tate. 1. About Reading and Writing Poetry. Western Wind, Anonymous. The Bed, Thom Gunn. Free and Formal Verse. Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton and Will Jennings. Traveling Through the Dark, William Stafford. A Blessing, James Wright. Across the Great Divide, Kate Wolf. The One Girl at the Boys' Party, Sharon Olds. Grating Parmesan, Barbara Crooker. Appetite, Maxine Kumin. Eating Together, Li-Young Lee. The Window, C. J. Hannah. Under Stars, Tess Gallagher. Reading Poems for Writing Poems. Sunday Night, Raymond Carver. Invention Exercises. One Winter Morning, Thomas Heise. Gardenia, Wendy Bishop. Making Rules and Breaking Rules. 2. Accentual and Syllabic Verse—The Musics of Meters. Question, May Swenson. Accent and Alliteration. Waiting, Jody Eastman. The Lay of the Last Survivor, Anonymous, trans. by Michael Alexander. Meter (Just the Preliminaries). Beauty Salon, Kaila Boykin. Accentual—Alliterative Verse. From The Seafarer, Anonymous, trans. by Ezra Pound. The Wife's Complaint, Anonymous, trans. by Michael Alexander. Felix Randal, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Were it Not, Robert Pack. Waiting for the Wind, Donald Fikel. The Lilacs, Richard Wilbur. Canyon, Wendy Bishop. Backyard Backdrop, Chanda Langford. Syllabic Verse. Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas. Triad, Adelaide Crapsey. Deep, Oliver Ruiz. Back, Whitney Balliett. Beer Bottle, Ted Koozer. Miss Cho Composes in the Cafeteria, James Tate. Valley of Morning, Donald Hall. Paper Dolls, Henri Cole. 3. Couplets and the Sounds of Full, Slant, and No Rhyme. Evening Chess, Charles Simic. Building With Couplets. The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams. We Real Cool, Gwendolyn Brooks. The Blue Shovel, Ben Floyd. Father is Mad at Me, Oliver Ruiz. Moving Into and Out of Rhyme. Morning Swim, Maxine Kumin. The Seals in Penobscot Bay, Daniel Hoffman. The Echoes of Couplets Past. The Letter, Alan Shapiro. Romantic, at Horseshoe Key, Enid Shomer. Your Apple Tree, Wendy Bishop. Tallahassee Summer, Melanie A. Rawls. Note to Sappho, Sandra McPherson. Twins of a Gazelle Which Feed Among Lilies, Catherine Bowman. Laundromat Love, Darrell Fike. After the Last Great Anti-War Demonstration, Sean Thomas Dougherty. War Story, Ellen Schendel. Self-Portrait, Natasha Clews. From Self-Portrait, Jenny Harvey. Treasure Hunting, Natasha Clews. An Old Whorehouse, Mary Oliver. 4. Elegies and Aubades—Meditations on Loss and Longing. On My First Son, Ben Jonson. Elegiac Meditations: From Grief to Consolation. On My First Daughter, Ben Jonson. Elegy for My Sister, Sherod Santos. Spring and Fall, Gerard Manley Hopkins. When You Are Old, William Butler Yeats. In Hardwood Groves, Robert Frost. A Lecture on the Elegy, William Stafford. An Elegy Is Preparing Itself, Donald Justice. Losing and Finding Family. Mid-Term Break, Seamus Heaney. Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead, Andrew Hudgins. Touched on the Cheek by the Tip of a Vulture's Wing, David Starkey. John Edward's Wake, Peter Stillman. Jane's Gifts, Nora Ruth Roberts. Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven, Hans Ostrom. Ralph's Gifts, Jason Hooper. Remembering to Remember. Back By Noon, Darrell Fike. Elegy, Christianne Balk. After Thunderstorms, Amorak Huey. Elegy for a Diver, Peter Meinke. Musée des Beaux Arts, W. H. Auden. St. Mark's Elegy, Pat MacEnulty. The Mock-Serious Elegy: Losing Animals and Attributes. Little Elegy, Donald Justice. Mouse Elegy, Sharon Olds. Elegies for the Hot Season, Sandra McPherson. Elegy for My Innocence, Steven Dunn. Meditation on Love: The Aubade. The Sun Rising, John Donne. An Aubade, Timothy Steele. Amost Aubade, Marilyn Hacker. A Late Aubade, Richard Wilbur. Aubade, Marilyn Chin. Dawn Song, Wendy Bishop. Nocturnal Tryst, Laurie McLeod. Aubade, Michelle Liles. French Quarter Kiss, Darrell Fike. After Love, Robin Behn. My Place, Stephen Sandy. 5. Ghazals and Pantoums—Inhabiting Another Language. Writing Across Cultures. Writing Ghazals. Ghazal VI, Ghalib, trans. by William Stafford. Ghazal XII, Ghalib, trans. by Adrienne Rich. Ghazal, Agha Shahid Ali. Ghazal of the Terrifying Presence, Federico Garcia Lorca. Drinking Song, Jim Harrison. Ghazal of Change, Richard Wade. Ghazal for Undergraduate Writing Students, Mary Jane Ryals. Wishing Spring: A Ghazal, Wendy Bishop. Horoscope Imperatives: A “Found” Ghazal, Wendy Bishop. Clichéd Ghazal, Jenny Harvey. Brown, Natasha Clews. This Is The Gazelle Ghazal, Hans Ostrom. Writing Pantoums. Harmonie Du Soir, Charles Baudelaire, trans. by Lord Alfred Douglas.. Atomic Pantoum, Peter Meinke. Pantoum on Lines by Wallace Stegner, Wendy Bishop. If This Doesn't Change Your Mind, Read It Again While Sitting in Your Old Truck: A Pantoum, William Snyder. The Desire of One (based on Plato's Symposium), Victoria Lan Sears. Pantoum, Terri Sapp. In the Attic, Donald Justice. Punk Pantoum, Pamela Stewart. Here, A. S. Kaufman. Crash Site, Melanie A. Rawls. Two Skulls, Mary Swander. 6. Haiku and Haiku-Like Sequences: Making a Perfect Little Out of a Lot of Life. In the Falling Snow, Richard Wright. Outside the Window, Snow, Nobuko Katsura. Poetic Scrimshaw. This Road, Matsuo Basho, trans.by Robert Hass. The Piercing Chill I Feel, Taniguchi Buson, trans.by Harold G. Henderson. Cricket Be, Kobayashi Issa, trans.by Robert Bly. The Old Dog Bends His Head Listening, Kobayashi Issa, trans. by Robert Bly. The Old Dog, Kobayashi Issa, trans. by Robert Hass. Three Haiku, Matsuo Basho, trans. by Robert Hass. Four Haiku, Taniguchi Buson, trans. by Robert Hass. Five Haiku, Kobayashi Issa, trans. by Robert Hass. In a Station of the Metro, Ezra Pound. On Climbing the Sierra Matterhorn Again After Thirty-One Years, Gary Snyder. Haiku Ambulance, Richard Bautigan. Love was Hotter and, Kim Wheatley. Working Saturday Night, Devan Cook. From Papyrus, Terry Ehret. Linked Haiku. Haiku, Rex West. Five Colors, Five Animals, Five Reasons, Wendy Bishop. The Seasons, Scott Dias. Four Louisiana Haiku, Abby Anderson. Collaborative Haiku. Tape Script: Food Haiku, Lara Moody and Ann Turkle. Haiku Sequences and Imitations. 37 Haiku, John Ashbery. 21 Summer Haiku, Devan Cook. 12 Suburban Haiku, Wendy Bishop. Haiku-Like Sequences—Poems in Connected Sections. The Public Bath, Gary Snyder. Ars Poetica, Linda Pastan. Trees at Night, Charles Simic. Twenty-Six Ways of Looking at a Blackman, Raymond Patterson. Housekeeping, Melanie Rawls Abrams. Composing Perspectives—Gender and Age. The Nuisance, Nobuko Katsura. The Wedding Reception in Progress:, Kimiko Itami. Window in the, Kiyoko Uda. To a Perspective Student, Matsuo Basho, trans. by Robert Hass. 9, Etheridge Knight. Writing Shit About New Snow, Kobayashi Issa, trans. by Robert Hass. 7. Listing and Repetition-Catalog, Complicating, and Syncopating. Driving at Dawn, Van K. Brock. The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes. Song for a Dark Girl, Langston Hughes. The Confessions of Gerrit, Gerrit Henry. Repetition to Unify. Two Worlds, Raymond Carver. Key West, Oliver Ruiz. Fortuitous Twos, Hans Ostrom. When I count to Three, Lauri Bohanan. Bavarian Gentians, D. H. Lawrence. Listing and Repetition that Catalogs and Names. Theme for English B, Langston Hughes. Nineteen, Elizabeth Alexander. The Idea of Ancestry, Etheridge Knight. Nineteen, Andrea Monroe. Shopping with Freud, William Snyder. Grammatical or Structural Repetition for Narrating, Naming, Explaining—Or Theme and Variation. I Go Back to May 1937, Sharon Olds. She Had Some Horses, Joy Harjo. He Has Lived In Many Houses, Thomas Lux. We are America, Rosa Soto. Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh, Gary Snyder. Fear, Raymond Carver. Infiinitives for the Waitress, Hans Ostrom. A Life, Wendy Bishop. Why I Miss the Midwest, Michelle Liles. Sound and Theme in Collusion. To Get to Fresno, Lawson Fusao Inada. Slip, Amorak Huey. Otherwise, Jane Kenyon. Jambalaya, Richard Wade. 8. Odes and Praisesongs—When Poets Look Up. A Noiseless Patient Spider, Walt Whitman. Ode on Mountains of Haiti, Mitshuca Beauchamp. In Praise of Henry James, Richard Wade. Odes. Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats. Ode on a Grecian Urn Summarized, Desmond Skirrow. Horace to Leucone, Edwin Arlington Robinson. Horace Coping, John Frederick Nims. Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen. Ode to Good Men Fallen Before Hero Come, Peter Meinke. Ode to a Reliable Thing, Natasha Clews. Ode to the Watermelon, Pablo Neruda. Ode to Okra, Mary Swander. O Cheese, Donald Hall. Ode to a Pancake, Mindy Kemman. Praise Songs and Poems of Praise. Praise Song, Wendy Bishop. Pied Beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Poem Made of Water, Nancy Willard. The Plum Trees, Mary Oliver. August, Mary Oliver. Praise the Tortilla, Praise the Menudo, Praise the Chorizo, Ray Gonzalez. Happiness, Raymond Carver. Senses of Happiness, Natasha Clews. 9. Prose Poems—Redefining the Line. Prose Poem, James Tate. Man with Wooden Leg Escapes Prison, James Tate. Oh My God, I'll Never Get Home, Russell Edson. A Death, Russell Edson. My Head, Russell Edson. The Harbor at Seattle, Robert Hass. The Accident, Robin Becker. The Letters of Sun Gee, Darrell Fike. Truck, Alys Culhane. Breaking the Mirror, Alys Culhane. Culley's Dog, Peter Stillman. Let Us Count the Ways. . .of the Prose Poem. Rehabilitation & Treatment in the Prisons of America, Etheridge Knight. My Mother, Jane Kenyon. The Colonel, Carolyn Forché. Loading a Boar, David Lee. The Moment You Know You Would've Been a Cowboy, Sean Carswell. The Found Prose Poem and the Long Prose Poem. Order in the Streets, Donald Justice. V-Mail, Wendy Bishop. Saturated Summer, Tina Cassel. The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter, Ezra Pound. Listen Mr. Oxford Don, John Aagard. The Woman Who Plays Imaginary Piano for her Potato, Bill Ransom. Original Sin—Halloween, 1960, Wendy Bishop. Suggestions for Turning Prose into Prose Poetry. 10. Quatrains-Compounding the Options in Line and Rhyme. Old Home Week, Donald Hall. Watermelons, Charles Simic. The Secret in the Cat, May Swenson. The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats. The Wind—tapped like a tired Man, Emily Dickinson. Wild Nights<->—Wild Nights!, Emily Dickinson. The Bat is Dun with Wrinkled Wings, Emily Dickinson. As Imperceptibly as Grief, Emily Dickinson. A Map of the City, Thom Gunn. Reading, Dreaming, Hiding, Kelly Cherry. Loving, Living, Falling (Imitation), Ed Flagg. Writing, Drinking, Humming (Imitation), Ellen Schendel. Quatrains on Language and Writing. The Thought-Fox, Ted Hughes. Hold a Page Up to Your Lips and Blow, Darrell Fike. Night Songs, Wendy Bishop. Read this Poem from the Bottom Up, Ruth Porritt. The Last Word, Jim Simmerman. Contemporary Narrative Quatrain Poems. Punishment, Seamus Heaney. Crazy Courage, Alma Luz Villanueva. The Pardon, Robert Pack. The Planet Krypton, Lynn Emanuel. Blue-Boxed Boy, Rhain Capley. Feeding Francis Bacon, Jennifer Wheelock. Birthday, Darrell Fike. Not in My Room, Rhain Capley. Note to the Orthopedic Specialist, Richard Wade. Ate Pimento on a Date, Brent Morris. 1990, A. S. Kaufman. 11. Sestinas—A Cat's Cradle of Word Patterns. Sestina, Elizabeth Bishop. Entering the Sestina. Sestina for Summer 1970, Devan Cook. King Edward Hotel, Michael Trammell. Sestina: Jeopardy, Donna Long. The Sestina of an Unmarried Mother, Mary Jane Ryals. Sestina for the House, Ronald Wallace Sestina for Indian Summer, Enid Shomer. Challenging the Form: Changing Stanzas, Multiplying Word Meanings, Moving Repeat Words. Nani, Alberto Rios. Bilingual Sestina, Julia Alvarez. Three Hundred Forty-Two Fifth Street Sestina, Sandra Teichmann. Mid-Life, Wendy Bishop. All-American Sestina, Florence Cassen Mayers. Good-bye to the American West in Six Colors: A Sestina After Florence Cassen Meyers' All-American Sestina, Devan Cook. 12. Sonnets—Exploring the Possibilities of Fourteen Lines. Desire, Molly Peacock. The Classics (English, Italian). That time of year thou mayst in me behold, William Shakespeare. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun, William Shakespeare. Sonnets from the Portuguese,43, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Design, Robert Frost. The Oven Bird, Robert Frost. Leda and the Swan, W. B. Yeats. Reveille, Wendy Bishop. Sonnets about Sonnets. Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room, William Wordsworth. July 19, 1979, Marilyn Hacker. Sad Stories Told in Bars: The “Reader's Digest” Version, William Matthews. The Bad Sonnet, Ronald Wallace. Posing at Three and a Half, Beth Lashley. Contemporary (Semi-Traditional). My Daughter Considers Her Body, Floyd Skloot. One Morning, Shoeing Horses, Henry Taylor. Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding, Beth Ann Fennelly. On the Grand Canyon's North Rim, Alan Michael Parker. Fourteen, Marilyn Hacker. Sway, Denis Johnson. Sing Sway, LaTrell Houston. For My Daughter, Weldon Kees. For My Nephew, Joseph Tuso. Persephone Underground, Rita Dove. Europa Exposed, A. S. Kaufman. Minnesota April, Kris Bigalk. Minnesota in October, Kris Bigalk. Lunch Counter, Devan Cook. Seeking a Vegetable Body, Devan Cook. Pool Cleaning in April, Wendy Bishop. Redefining the Sonnet Space. Sonnet, Robert Pinsky. House Party Sonnet: '66, Elizabeth Alexander. Romantic Sonnet, Charles Simic. The Heart's Location, Peter Meinke. At North Farm, John Ashbery. Lullaby, Joy Oliff. 13. Tercets, Terza Rima, Triplets, and Villanelles—Thinking in Threes. Rain, Raymond Carver. Separation, W. S. Merwin. Morning Song, Sylvia Plath. Bidwell Ghost, Louise Edrich. Frog Gig, Mary Swander. Christmas in Florida, Jason Burns. Writing Poems, Mary Oliver. The Buckeye, Rita Dove. The Poem You Asked For, Larry Lewis. Country Wisdoms, Maggie Anderson. There Is No Such Thing as an Everlasting Moment, Rhain Capley. Toward Terza Rima and Triplets. The Fish Tank, Glover Davis. Medallion, Sylvia Plath. The Housekeeper, Wendy Bishop. Pink Dog, Elizabeth Bishop. Three Silences, Rachel Hadas. Villanelles. One Art, Elizabeth Bishop. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas. The Christmas Tree, Frederick Morgan. Shunning, Mary Swander. Saturday at the Border, Hayden Carruth. Waitress, Amarillo, Wendy Bishop. Morning, Mom, and Me, Jeff Scherzer. Villanelle, Tara Reynolds. Too Late Called Me Home, Chanda Langford. Terzanelle on Drought, Wendy Bishop. Appendix: Three Case Studies in Form and Revision. Revision Case Study, Devan Cook. Revision Case Study, William Synder. Revision Case Study, Rex West. Pocket Definitions Reprised. Index of Authors and Titles. Index of Forms and Themes. Index of Terms.