Chapter One Books

“The reflections of writers such as Jane Hirshfield, David Lehman, Phillip Lopate, and Arthur Sze offer inspiration, companionship, and good advice for any poet seeking permission to embark on their work.” The Writer’s Bookshelf, Poets & Writers Magazine

“Aspiring poets will find a rich vein of insight in these thoughtful pieces.”—Publishers Weekly

On Becoming a Poet: Twenty-five Original Essays and Interviews

Susan Terris, Editor

Original memoirs by outstanding poets from diverse backgrounds who recall how they found their beginnings. While university creative writing programs generally seek to develop the talents of maturing writers, essential information about the development of the craft will be found in these early memoirs. “Simply the best collection of essays I’ve ever read about the urgencies, accidents, experiences, and desires that allow people to emerge as the writers they had never dreamt they might become.” −David St. John

The Inventor: A Poet’s Transcolonial Autobiography

Eileen R. Tabios, prolific poet, on creating unique and original poetic Forms:

I wrote The Inventor not because it’s about my life but, because it’s an autobiography that connects history, language, and poetry in a unique way beyond narratives. I learned English because it became widespread in my birth land, the Philippines, through U.S. colonialism. That caused me, as a young poet, to feel estranged from my raw material: English. My poetry practice, however, would lift me out of politics to meet poetry more directly as its own type of language. Ultimately, my prolonged engagement with poets, enabled me to create poetry inventions that metaphorically disrupts colonialism by generating communities of readers and writers worldwide. These inventions include the “hay(na)ku” which has spread globally among poets and, most recently, the “Flooid” whose pre-writing condition precedent of a “good deed” makes poetry live redemptively and beyond the page. In THE INVENTOR, I show how Poetry is not mere words but a proactive approach to improving our relationships with each other and life on our planet.

The Birth of The Best by David Lehman

Every September a new edition of The Best American Poetry appears, quickening pulses, provoking arguments. From one year to the next, the editor’s name on the cover is different, as is the cover art. The series editor is the one constant. It is the title David Lehman has held since the inaugural volume came out in 1988.

The first chapter, written for the 2o18 reissue of the inaugural volume of the series, gives an account of the birth of The Best American Poetry and is followed by the forewords Lehman wrote for the books that appeared in consecutive years from 2015 through 2022−years marked by the Trump presidency, the Covid pandemic, the pollution of civic discourse by way of social media, new forms of censorship, and now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Naturally, these developments have had a profound effect on the anthology’s poets and what they aim to do in their work. This book chronicles that history and, at the same time, serves as a personal introduction for editors beginning their own magazines, book series or small presses.

“Enlightening for creative writing students at all levels.” James Tipton, PhD, Professor of English, College of Marin

Creativity: Where Poems Begin by Mary Mackey

What is creativity? Where do writers get their ideas? In this brilliantly written, profound, deeply personal examination of how creative ideas have come to her, award-winning poet and New York Times best-selling novelist Mary Mackey looks at the origins of inspiration, taking us to on a journey to the place where poetry begins. “Her quest makes Creativity a book for anyone who wants to understand how bursts of insight come not only to poets and writers but to all of us.” —Mara Lynn Keller, PhD, Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Religion and Women’s Studies, California

If you’re a poet, how are you going to survive if you can’t get a teaching job?

Plan B: A Poet’s Survivors Manual, by Sandy McIntosh

You need a Plan B if you want to put food on the table, wear shoes without holes in the soles, and stop living with roommates before you turn sixty. Taking us on a witty, fascinating, no-holds barred romp through his own experiences in the world of commercial writing and publishing, McIntosh reassures us that it is possible to have a successful career as a poet while holding down day jobs that make us better writers. “PLAN B: is a wonderful book, an important book, a book aspiring writers of fiction and poetry should read.” —David Lehman, Editor, The Oxford Book of American Poetry. Series Editor, The Best American Poetry

Craft: A Memoir by Tony Trigilio

An exploration of the writer’s craft through a series of short, linked personal essays. Each chapter features an anecdote from the author’s development as a writer that illustrates craft elements central to his body of work. Craft: A Memoir is an effort to understand craft through discussions of the direct experience of writing itself—through stories of how Trigilio became a writer. Whether discussing traditional or unconventional craft elements, each essay pivots on the idea that the most effective way to learn one’s own craft is through storytelling rather than the linear, business-memo pragmatism of how-to handbooks.

Where Did Poetry Come From: Some Early Encounters by Geoffrey O’Brien

A memoir in episodes of some early encounters—with the spoken word, the written word, the sung word—in childhood and adolescence, encounters that suggested different aspects of the mysterious and shapeshifting phenomenon imperfectly represented by the abstract noun “poetry.” From nursery rhymes and television theme songs, show tunes and advertising jingles, Classic Comics and Bible verses, to first meetings with the poetry of Stevenson, Poe, Coleridge, Ginsberg, and others, it tracks not final assessments but a description of the unexpected revelations that began to convey how poetry “made its presence known before it had been given a name.”