Craft and Creativity
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Making Poetry Evocative
A good poem evokes emotions that linger long after the final line. How do poets accomplish this? Close attention to language and imagery matters—but so does the arrangement of those words and images. A poet’s work, whether the poet knows this or not, often works towards what T. S. Eliot called the “objective correlative.” Let’s…
Storytelling As Empathy
A good story builds bridges. The reader, and the characters themselves, come to understand the subjects of the story better. A rich person and a poor person; two people of different races, creeds, or nationalities; even, yes, a human and a talking monkey. When good fiction guides us down that bridge, we come to understand…
On Sound in Poetry
Poetry and music have a long history with one another. In Ancient Greece, for example, poetry was always accompanied by an instrument, typically a lyre—that’s where we get the phrase “lyric poetry” from. Other fun facts: a “sonnet” is a “little song,” and poetry forms like the aubade or the ghazal started as types of…