Barbara Drake’s Writing Poetry (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983) is intended “not only [as] a text of specific writing suggestions and illustrative poems suitable for a writing workshop, but . . . also [as] a reference that need not take time away from student work,” as Ms. Drake says in her Preface. I have used the book as a supplementary—though not a required—text in my creative writing classes and have found the writing suggestions very helpful, the illustrative poems sometimes useful (you will want to supplement them with your own “useful poems,” of course) and the reference material—particularly that which deals with how to get published—essential for the student writer. I think that, as a teacher of creative writing, you might have a similar response to this book, and I recommend it on those grounds. In addition, this book returns the student to his own life, his own mind, his own memories for the source of poetry, and I have found this element the most useful. It answers the student’s question, “What can I write about?” And it does it in an effective manner.

For example, the first chapter, “The Uses of Memory,” returns the student writer to the source of almost all good writing—recollection. “What is your earliest memory? Is it of a shadowy face looking down at you in your crib, a broken toy, an accident, a noise, your first day of school?” Through the use of memory, and with an emphasis on the use of sensuous detail (what did your grandmother’s hands smell like when they emerged from the dishwater?) the teacher of creative writing can direct the student writer to the source of all poetry, that source being in the individual mind. Ms. Drake does us a service. She knows that the teacher should not begin with “technique,” but with sensuous detail recollected in tranquility. “But how do we know which memories are worth writing about? To a certain extent, we must trust our own mental processes to edit and select what is most significant.” “The lesson of Proust, for poets and other writers, is that memory resides in the body and its senses. Which of your senses takes you most readily into memory—taste, smell, sight?” In this chapter, also, Ms. Drake gives essential information on keeping journals—"The Factual Journal,” "The Thematic Journal,” “The Rough-Draft Journal.” “Get in the habit of monitoring your thoughts and imagination. Listen to yourself, and try making up poems in your head. If a thought intrigues you, write it down, forget it, then come back to it later and see whether you can use the idea or words or image to make a poem.” It has been my experience that student writers do not know these basic facts about creative writing. Ms. Drake presents the facts in clear, easily understood language. A teacher can save a student writer years which might be spent fumbling for the method simply by pointing it out in this text: write it down, forget it, come back to it, see if it begins to turn into a poem. There it is.

Ms. Drake gives other methods which spark memories, images and ideas. For instance, she has a chapter on “Lists and Catalogs,” which I have found useful in my classes. You might find her chapter on “Found Poetry” interesting, though my students rejected the notion that you can find poetry anywhere “even in the words written on a container of Right Guard.” (Try it. My students were wrong). I start many of my classes with “free association,” since this is where most of my own writing comes from, and therefore I liked her chapter “Surrealism, Automatic Writing, and Romanticism.” “If we agree with Duncan, then this is the fruitfulness of automatic writing or free association—to discover knowledge, language, or facility, we did not know we had. The point is to loosen up and overcome the inhibitions, preconceptions, and habits that prevent us from being more imaginative, insightful, and genuinely ourselves. Even if we later revise stringently, the brainstorming process that precedes revision must be open and receptive. It is good to become, for a while, a language contortionist, a juggler of words, a syntactical trapeze artist.”

Other teachers will find other useful things in the book. There is a chapter on “Lyric, Narrative, and the Idea of Genres” and another on “Archetypes, Universal Subjects, and Myth Making” which might be useful if you wish to move the student away from his own experience into a wider world of literary forms or universal images. But personally, I found this book a wise, practical, “hands on” text, which shows the student where to go for the material on his poetry and then what specific things to do with it when he gets there. Coming at it as a writer first and a teacher second, I found this approach exactly what I wanted. "How do I do it?” the student asks. I can reply, “Here are some methods, embodied in this book.” The book gives my teaching methods an authority. It also validates my experience as a practicing writer. I recommend it.