The Minds Eye: A Guide to Poetry Writing by Kevin Clark

The Minds Eye: A Guide to Poetry Writing Reviews

• 
  Teacherhuman

  clear and lovely! full of lessons to pass on to my poets in the making!
• 
  D.E. Chandler

  This book was truly inspirational. I loved it!
• 
  Jessie

  An excellent guide for any student with or without a teacher.
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  Vivian Zenari

  Solid intro of what a person could do in poetry. I appreciated its organization, which emphasizes contemporary free verse poetry. Traditional forms are discussed later.
• 
  Nikki

  3.5
  A good introduction to poetry for the very beginning student, or one who does not have any grasp on poetry at all. Full of contemporary poets as well. The last several chapters, which are devoted to different types of poetry (love poems, elegies, etc.) can get rendundant and sweeping in their generalizations.
• 
  Kelci Schmidt

  While some of the poems included to illustrate particular elements of craft were interesting, the analyses of said poems were trite, condescending, and shallow. The very few writing prompts the text offers are fine, but nothing new. I'm not sure if this is just an issue with my copy of the book, but the "Poet's Notecard" sections look like they were printed with like, the ten cent copier at the public library- dark and grainy almost to the point of illegibility (although frankly, these "notecards" are basically garbage, so it's not like not being able to read them is too devastating). Overall, for a text that claims to be a guide, The Mind's Eye does very little guiding; the only useful thing I took away from reading it was a few new poets to check out, and there are much better anthological sources for that kind of thing. I honestly can't even see this book being useful to a beginning poet.
• 
  D'Argo Agathon

  I think it's hard to rate "writing guides" like this... but this book has a lot of interesting and thought provoking sections, examples, and exercises. A good read if you are thinking about really applying yourself to poetry, but nothing can teach you to write, other than to write.
• 
  Joshua Novalis

  Interesting Primer to Poetry. I would have liked more of a focus on structure, form, and theme, but almost all of Clark's efforts are focused on imagery, which, albeit, is an integral part of poetry. Pretty good, but there's probably better options for an introduction to poetry.
• 
  Tori-Lynn

  I loved Kevin Clark's guide for beginning poets. Part instructional guidebook, part workbook, it is the perfect balance. I loved the exercises he included at the end of every chapter I found myself doing them eagerly. Definitely one of the best I have used so far.
• 
  Coriander

  A really great basic guide to different forms of poetry and their functions and how they can be used. Without forcing you to always use these rules, but experiment with them and use the rules yet also discard and work how you like.
• 
  Anh Thuy

  Prof. Gloria never fail me in choosing his awesome textbooks :)