Wolf at The Door Recommended Book List, Summer 2004


Books about Writing


W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other essays (Faber, 1975)
Robert Bly, Talking All Morning (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1980) - interviews
Raymond Carver, Fires (Picador 1986) - essays on writing + short fiction and poems
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: freeing the writer within (Shabhala, Boston, 1986)
Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind (Routledge, 1991)
Dana Gioia ŒCan Poetry Matter¹ (Graywolf, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1992)
Seamus Heaney, The Government of the Tongue (Faber, 1988) Prose essays
Seamus Heaney, Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968 -78 (Faber, 1980)
Seamus Heaney Finders Keepers - Selected Prose 1971-2001 (Faber 2002)
Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (New York, HarperCollins, 1997)
Ted Hughes, Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose (Faber 1994)
Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making (Faber 1967)
Andrew Motion ŒPhilip Larkin: A Writer¹s Life¹ (Faber, 1993)
Denise Levertov, Light up The Cave (New York, New Directions, 1981) Essays.
Denise Levertov, The Poet in The World (New York, New Directions, 1973) Essays
David Lodge, The Practice of Writing (Penguin, 1996)
David Lodge, The Art of Fiction (Secker & Warburg, 1992)
Federico Garcia Lorca, 'The Theory and Function of the Duende,' (Selected Poems, Trans. J. L. Gill, Penguin, 1960)
Ruth Padel: 52 ways of Looking at a Poem: how reading modern poetry can change your life. (Chatto & Windus, 2002) ­ valuable close readings of some widely different poems.
Sangharakshita and J. O. Mallander, In the Realm of the Lotus: a Conversation about Art, Beauty and the Spiritual Life (Birmingham, Windhorse Publications, 1995)
Sangharakshita, The Religion of Art (Windhorse, 1988)
Strong Words: Modern poets on Modern poetry, edited by W. N. Herbert and Matthew Hollis, (Bloodaxe Books, 2000)
Charles Simic, Wonderful words, Silent Truth: essays on poetry and a Memoir (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1990)
Peter Sansom 'Writing Poems: Bloodaxe Poetry handbooks: 2' (Bloodaxe Books, 1994, £8.95)- Workshop techniques, useful bibliography and magazine listings.
Mark Strand & Eavan Boland, 'The Making of a Poem: a Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms' (Norton, 2000)
William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer's Vocation (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1978) - Essays.
William Stafford, You Must Revise Your Life (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1986) - Essays.
Stephen Kuusisto, Deborah Tall, David Weiss, Editors, ŒThe Poet¹s Notebook¹ (New York, Norton, 1995)
Michael Schmidt, ŒLives of The Poets¹ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998)
Clare Brown & Don Paterson (eds.) ŒDon¹t Ask Me What I Mean: poets in their Own Words¹ (Picador, 2003)
Urthona: A Magazine of Buddhism and the Arts #19 (Autumn 2003) 'Writing: The Healing Art?' Contains essays on the art of writing by Robert Gray, Jane Hirshfield, Peter J. Conradi, Dhammachari Abhaya, Ursula Le Guin, Beverley Farmer, Anish Kapoor, and William Stafford. Email Urthona for full details and availability.
James Wood: The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief (Jonanthan Cape, 1999)

Poetry Anthologies


Donald Hall, Contemporary American Poetry (Penguin, 1972)
Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (ed. Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney, Faber pb, 1996)
The Penguin Book of English verse, Ed. by John Hayward (Penguin, 1956)
Don Paterson, (ed.) 101 Sonnets from Shakespeare to Heaney (Faber, 1999)
The Rattle Bag, ed. Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, (Faber 1982)
The School Bag, ed. Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, (Faber 1997)
The Long Pale Corridor: contemporary Poems of Bereavement, ed Judi Bewnson and Agneta Falk (Bloodaxe pb, 1996)
By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember, ed. Ted Hughes (Faber pb 1997)
Staying Alive ed. Neil Astley (Faber pb, 2002)
The Faber Book of Contemporary American poetry Ed. Helen Vendler (Faber pb, 1986)
The Rag and Bone Shop of The Heart: Poems for Men, edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade (New York, HarperCollins, pb, 1992)
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