Poetics

The poetics program is designed to enable students to understand poetry and the significant role that poetics play in the construction of good writing, whether that writing is poetry or not. After all, poetics are not just for poets. Great novelists incorporate poetic techniques into the prose paragraphs of their novels, adding soundtracks to their plots.

In the poetics books, students are taught in increasing detail about the elements of poems, including patterns of sound, meter, stanza, figures of speech, poetic techniques, and meaning. Students learn how meticulously poets plan and craft poems, and they gain an appreciation for both the rigorous intellectual discipline and the complex creativity that a poet must bring together in order to create a poem.

“I want students to experience an overwhelming sense of the substance of poetry, that it is an art form of surprising power, a body of knowledge so impressive and elaborate that it is a shock—it isn’t what they thought. I want students to learn that you can analyze two small quatrains for page after page, and even then there is still more detail to find in the poem. I want students to realize that it is not absurd to inspect poems for such minute detail because the details are usually there, and they matter.”

– Michael Clay Thompson

Michael gives special attention to the design of each page of the books so that students can see the concepts not only through the text but visually as well. With books that are beautiful, creative, engaging, and unusual, this series positively soars.