How a Poem Moves
CBC Books | | Posted: April 9, 2019 5:08 PM | Last Updated: June 3, 2019
Adam Sol
Developed from Adam Sol's popular blog, How a Poem Moves is a collection of 35 short essays that walks readers through an array of contemporary poems. Sol is a dynamic teacher, and in these essays, he has captured the humour and engaging intelligence for which he is known in the classroom. With a breezy style, Sol delivers essays that are perfect for a quick read or to be grouped together as a curriculum.
Though How a Poem Moves is not a textbook, it demonstrates poetry's range and pleasures through encounters with individual poems that span traditions, techniques and ambitions. This illuminating book is for readers who are afraid they "don't get" poetry but who believe that, with a welcoming guide, they might conquer their fear and cultivate a new appreciation. (From ECW Press)
From the book
I was only seventeen when I started as an undergraduate at Tufts University, outside of Boston, but I already knew that I had literary ambitions. Hearing this, an upperclassman said to me, "You should take Levine's class, 'The Poem.' It's not supposed to be for freshmen, but he doesn't care. Come to a few classes and he'll sign you in."
So my friend Risa and I gamely attended while this gruff, brilliant, wiry man with a ferocious moustache brilliantly opened poems to us, interspersed with terrifying workshops and occasional rants about the Tufts administration, American politics, and dogs. "Levine" was Philip Levine, whose hard-nosed lyric poems earned him an international reputation, a cartload of awards, and a post as the Poet Laureate of the United States.
From How a Poem Moves by Adam Sol ©2019. Published by ECW Press.