The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets

Ted Kooser has been writing and publishing poetry for more than forty years. In the pages of *The Poetry Home Repair Manual*, Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions (and warnings against instructions) that poets-aspiring or practicing-can use to hone their craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry's ultimate purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts.

Much more than a guidebook to writing and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening conversation with a wise and patient old friend-a friend who is willing to share everything he's learned about the art he's spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.