English 1 & 2  ♦ West Morris Central

Mr. David Crews

Echoes

Echoes is the official Literary Magazine of West Morris Central High School.  Submissions are welcome all year long.  The magazine itself is produced in the spring of each school year.

 

Meeting Schedule:

Time-  Wednesdays, Lunch
Place-  A140

 

Announcements:

 

First meeting will be held Wednesday, at lunch, in room A140.  This gathering will be important for those people planning to attend the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.

 

New members are always welcome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books with Essays on Poetry and Craft:

 

 

Aspiring writers please read:

 

Visit our website: www.wmrfh.org/echoes

“We are the echo of the future”  —W.S. Merwin
Text Box: Stephen Dobyns, Best Words, Best Order ($17.95, Amazon) Stephen Dobyns is a master at defining the nature of art and its place in our society. In this book, there are extremely insightful essays on pacing and tone, and an in-depth analysis on the history and evolution of free verse. This is a must read for future poets. The arts civilize us, not by making us ‘cultured’ but by educating our feelings, by helping us live in the human community and realizing that others have interior lives similar to our own. Donald Hall, Breakfast Served Any Time All Day ($14.00, Amazon) Donald Hall has compiled a book of essays that examine poetry, its place in society, as well as the techniques of some of our great modern poets. There is a nonintellectual beauty in the moving together of words in phrases—‘the music of diction’—and in resolution of image and metaphor. Sophisticated readers of poetry respond quickly to the sensual body of a poem, before they interrogate the poem at all. The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity. Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates ($11.05, Amazon) Jane Hirshfield addresses the art of poetry with sensitivity and a deep understanding for the human condition. The spiritual energy that traverses her essays connects the worlds of mind and body to examine fully the visceral and emotional connections in poetry. The heart thinks; the mind feels keenly. In poetry, mind, emotion, body, and perception are similarly entwined, each circling into the realm of the others, part of a whole. Such interweaving forges an imaginative understanding in which language is not so much the object of attention as an act of attention played out, before us and in us: poetry’s hearing and seeing as well as speaking. Tony Hoagland, Real Sofistikashun ($10.20, Amazon) Tony Hoagland has a wit and an imagination second to none. His essays on poetry and craft provide intense and thorough analysis of artists who grasp the definitive nature of expression through the written word. The pleasure of stripes and polka dots: as readers we get to enjoy the absurdity of the juxtaposition and also to enjoy the oblique, irregular ways in which the two discourses interact. Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town ($11.16, Amazon) Richard Hugo spent many years as director of the creative writing program at the University of Montana. His essays get to the hear of the writer’s world and are sprinkled with tiny gems of advice for growing poets and artists. Once language exists only to convey information, it is dying. Steve Kowit, In the Palm of Your Hand ($10.17, Amazon) Steve Kowit brings readers through a wide scope of poets in order to examine the craft of verse. With countless examples, his essays provide insights and prompt for developing writers. The quality of appearing to be true to life, of capturing a person or occasion with such accuracy that the reader recognizes it as true, is called verisimilitude. . .Remember to show us rather than tell us: use vivid, expressive details to give the reader the picture you want us to see before our eyes. Concentrate on describing the action in such a way that the reader will understand the feelings of the characters without having to be told them. Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook ($11.20, Amazon) Mary Oliver provides a perfect introduction to the world of poetry and craft. Her essays begin on the very first step—individuals learn through imitation—and take the reader further and further down the rabbit hole of verse. This book could not be a better choice for a launching point into the world of craft. The poet uses the actual, known event or experience to elucidate the inner, invisible experience. Ellen Bryant Voigt, The Flexible Lyric ($10.41, Amazon) Ellen Bryant Voigt offers a celebration to the world of verse. Her essays examine how poets attain beauty through the precision in language. Her writing explores language, its structural forms, and the power of images in order to evoke an emotional response in the minds and hearts of readers. Since almost all poems in English are linear—read left to right and down the page—structure is also the purposeful order in which materials are released to the reader, whereas form creates pattern in these materials, to establish pleasing proportion, balance, unity—‘a single effect’—in an otherwise overwhelmingly various texture.