The Poetry of the Self-Taught demonstrates the characteristic strengths of self-taught poetry and analyzes the factors that have caused most selftaught poets to disappear from anthologies and from literary history. Raising the question of whether or not their work should be read today and taken seriously - instead of being relegated to separate and unequal categories like women's or «peasant» poetry - the book highlights interesting contrasts between the poetry of eighteenth-century autodidacts such as Robert Burns, Mary Leapor, C.D.F. Schubart, and Anna Louise Karsch and the work of their contemporaries, mainstream poets like Alexander Pope, James Thomson, C.F. Gellert, and Barthold Heinrich Brockes. Self-taught poetry is often treated as an index to the lives and times of the poets, but this book explores it with a different purpose: to understand and illustrate the commonalities in autodidactic poetics, imagery, rhetorical strategies, and themes. Concurrent with a recent upturn of interest in «laboring» or self-taught poets both in England and in Germany, The Poetry of the Self-Taught will be useful for courses focusing on such poets or those dealing with eighteenth-century literature.

For this companion to her New York Times best-selling collection A Family of Poems, Caroline Kennedy has hand-selected more than a hundred of her favorite poems that lend themselves to memorization. Some are joyful. Some are sad. Some are funny and lighthearted. Many offer layers of meaning that reveal themselves only after the poem has been studied so closely as to be learned by heart. In issuing the challenge to memorize great poetry, Caroline Kennedy invites us to a deeply enriching experience. For as she reminds us, “If we learn poems by heart, not only do we have their wisdom to draw on, we also gain confidence, knowledge and understanding that no one can take away.” Illustrated with gorgeous, original watercolor paintings by award-winning artist Jon J Muth , this is truly a book for all ages, and one that families will share again and again. Caroline’s thoughtful introductions shed light on the many ways we can appreciate poetry, and the special tradition of memorizing and reciting poetry that she celebrates within her own family.

Are you striving for fluency but wondering if something's missing? When learning a language becomes a tool for self-exploration, transformation, and personal growth, there is no goal to reach. The language learning journey changes. You change.What if you started by giving yourself permission to let go of the traditional ideas about language learning that aren't working for you? As language learners, we have been taught how to learn a language in Let go of the idea that learning is linear, and you have to be goal-oriented or pass through stages of achievement as if there was an ending point one can get to.We have been taught languages from a place of separation, as in, "I am a native speaker of one language and all the others are (and will always be) foreign and a "target" to get to. We have resorted only to our intellect to learn grammar and vocabulary and focused mainly on the outer-directed communication skills (speaking, writing...emails!) as a measure of achievement.What if I told you that there is another way? A cyclical way that moves towards depth in a never-ending spiral of understanding. A way that will allow you to express yourself in every language you study as in your own. That will allow you to discover more of yourself and connect with others deeply in any language you learn? A way that involves your entire body, works with your senses and emotions, and dances harmoniously with nature?I am an experienced language teacher and language lover. I know what it's like to study languages beyond a point of fluency on several occasions, and even to express yourself in "non-native" languages sometimes even better than in her native one.This book is based on linguistic and neuroeducation research, exploring the potential for learning of our brains as part of our bodies, and not as the only organ running the show. But this book is not academic. It has a strong poetic voice that will speak to your heart, rather than to your brain.Are you ready to see how your thread weaves into the fabric of languages? Are you ready to be transformed through them?

An impassioned call for a return to reading poetry and an incisive argument for poetry’s accessibility to all readers, by critically acclaimed poet Matthew Zapruder In Why Poetry, award-winning poet Matthew Zapruder takes on what it is that poetry—and poetry alone—can do. Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. In lively, lilting prose, he shows us how that misunderstanding interferes with our direct experience of poetry and creates the sense of confusion or inadequacy that many of us feel when faced with it. Zapruder explores what poems are, and how we can read them, so that we can, as Whitman wrote, “possess the origin of all poems,” without the aid of any teacher or expert. Most important, he asks how reading poetry can help us to lead our lives with greater meaning and purpose. Anchored in poetic analysis and steered through Zapruder’s personal experience of coming to the form, Why Poetry is engaging and conversational, even as it makes a passionate argument for the necessity of poetry in an age when information is constantly being mistaken for knowledge. While he provides a simple reading method for approaching poems and illuminates concepts like associative movement, metaphor, and negative capability, Zapruder explicitly confronts the obstacles that readers face when they encounter poetry to show us that poetry can be read, and enjoyed, by anyone.

Reference guide to poetry anthologies with descriptions and evaluations of each anthology.