Recommended Reading

Three books every young poet should read:



Letters to a Young Poet
I fear I read this book a little too late to experience it as one is meant to. I had passed through that period in my life in which the canon seemed too large to fit into. I had written letters to poets that went unanswered. So ever since I read this book a little over a year ago and read how the long-dead German poet Rainer Maria Rilke had answered many of my own questions, I have been recommending it to writers—both writers with questions and those with answers they haven't figured out how to shape.

The Necessary Angel
Essays on Reality and the Imagination
"The real is constantly being engulfed in the unreal," writes Wallace Stevens "[Poetry] is an illumination of a surface, the movement of a self in the rock." These essays contain more truths than criticisms, more anomalies than philosophies... and the result is a reading experience more like hearing a friend confess his obligations than a teacher conduct a lesson. And yet lessons are there, too many to count, too articulate to question.

The Triggering Town
Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing
"For all students of creative writing—and for their teachers," writes Richard Hugo in his dedication note for this stunning collection of lectures, essays, and reflections. Now a classic text for the teaching of writing, this book is easy to read while offering insights anyone, from beginning poets to mature writers, will benefit from.