This book offers guidance for poets at every stage of development. It is a book about a person's shaping his or her memory and passions, pleasures, obsessions, dreams, secrets, and sorrows into poems. The book contains chapters on the language and music of poetry, the art of revision, traditional and experimental techniques, and how to get poetry started, perfected, and published. It also contains model poems by many of the best contemporary poets, illuminating discussion on craft, and detailed suggestions for writing dozens of personal poems about the deepest and most passionate concerns. The product of a practicing poet who also teaches in a university, the book can be used in class, in a workshop setting, and independently at home. (NKA)