Singing School
Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters
18 October 2013
Description
A bold new approach to writing (and reading) poetry based on great poetry of the past.
Robert Pinsky’s headnotes for each of the 80 poems and his brief introductions to each section take a writer’s view of specific works: William Carlos Williams’s “Fine Work with Pitch and Copper” for intense verbal music; Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” for wild imagination in matter-of-fact language; Robert Southwell’s “The Burning Babe” for surrealist aplomb; Wallace Stevens’s “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm” for subtlety in meter. Included are poems by Aphra Behn, Allen Ginsberg, George Herbert, John Keats, Mina Loy, Thomas Nashe, and many other master poets.
This anthology respects poetry’s mysteries in two senses of the word: techniques of craft and strokes of the inexplicable.
Reviews
"Singing School is nothing like the usual anthology of safe and sane selections. Instead, it is a gathering of poetry designed to stimulate the young and startle the old practitioner, with a surprise around every corner. Where else might you find Sterling Brown's 'Harlem Happiness' next to Queen Elizabeth I’s 'When I Was Fair and Young,' and two poems away from Plath's 'Nick and the Candlestick'?…a book that will instruct and charm every reader." — Alicia Ostriker
"Robert Pinsky is, everyone knows, one of the great poetry teachers of our time. The tone of his discussion always combines patience and delight, and he is especially valuable to us because the knowledge he imparts is systematic—to read one of his explications of a poem is to understand something more about all the poems you'll read from that moment on." — Tony Hoagland
Also By: Robert Pinsky 
Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet
Paperback, 2024
"Truly the voice of the Jersey Shore."—Bruce Springsteen
Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet
Hardback, 2022
An alternatingly funny and poignant memoir from “our finest living example of [the American civic poet]” (The New York Times)
The Book of Poetry for Hard Times: An Anthology
Paperback, 2021
Robert Pinsky, “our finest living example of [the American civic poet]” (New York Times), gathers poems that cope with the most extreme human emotions.
The Mind Has Cliffs of Fall: Poems at the Extremes of Feeling
E Book, 2019
Robert Pinsky, “our finest living example of [the American civic poet]” (New York Times), gathers poems that cope with the most extreme human emotions.
Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud
Hardback, 2009
A vibrant anthology and accompanying CD that revive a great American tradition: the joy of reciting poetry aloud.
