This book contains ninety-four exercises designed to inspire creativity and help poets hone their skills. Each exercise includes a clearly-stated learning objective, historical background matter on the particular subgenre being explored, and an example written by students at Western Kentucky University. The text also contains model poems by leading American poets including Sherman Alexie, Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel, and Dean Young. The book's five chapters correspond with the five canons of classical rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.

The Poetry Gymnasium: 94 Proven Exercises to Shape Your Best Verse

Literature & Fiction

Hunley, Tom C.

History & Criticism

McFarland Company

The creative writing workshop: beloved by some, dreaded by others, and ubiquitous in writing programs across the nation. For decades, the workshop has been entrenched as the primary pedagogy of creative writing. While the field of creative writing studies has sometimes myopically focused on this single method, the related discipline of composition studies has made use of numerous pedagogical models. In Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century, editors Alexandria Peary and Tom C. Hunley gather experts from both creative writing and composition studies to offer innovative alternatives to the traditional creative writing workshop. Drawing primarily from the field of composition studies—a discipline rich with a wide range of established pedagogies—the contributors in this volume build on previous models to present fresh and inventive methods for the teaching of creative writing. Each chapter offers both a theoretical and a historical background for its respective pedagogical ideas, as well as practical applications for use in the classroom. This myriad of methods can be used either as a supplement to the customary workshop model or as stand-alone roadmaps to engage and reinvigorate the creative process for both students and teachers alike. A fresh and inspiring collection of teaching methods, Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century combines both conventional and cutting-edge techniques to expand the pedagogical possibilities in creative writing studies.

Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century

Reference

Peary, Alexandria

Words, Language & Grammar

Southern Illinois University Press

Inspired by America's most prominent hallmark of modern pop culture, The Simpsons, poet Tom C. Hunley shares his narratives––autobiographical or allegorical––by channeling the eccentric personas of residents in the animated sitcom's town, Springfield, and trusting their voices to speak on his behalf, resulting in true poetic entertainment. As author Denise Du Vernay states in the collection's introduction, "Tom's interaction with The Simpsons doesn't follow sitcom or even cartoon rules. He doesn't have to. Tom follows a mysterious set of rules, completely unknown to those of us without a poet's sensibilities." That is the sentiment that defines Hunley as an artist. He is a poet who has a firm grip on poetic formalism (the "rules"), but, as is the case with any true artist––perhaps a guitarist for the sake of a metaphoric example––Hunley knows when it's time to part from his Eddie Van Halen trickery in exchange for what resonates with those who are unfamiliar with the "rules," "theories, and "doctrines" of art: gritty power chords strummed in the manners of Kurt Cobain or Johnny Ramone. While capable of boggling a reader's mind with poetics only a limited audience bothers to appreciate these days, Hunley has taken to The Simpsons in order to depart the shoebox diorama boundaries most readers and writers of verse wallow in, and instead reach out to those of us who want to feel aroused by humor and drama rather than feel disoriented by, for example, accounts of lucid dreaming juxtaposed with archaic Polish folklore found in the nationalistic opera of Stanislaw Moniuszko. In short, Hunley wants poetry back on the map as an element of pop culture rather than vaulted property of academia and patrons of Sotheby's auction house. The State That Springfield Is In may very well be the poetry collection to materialize his bold objective.

The State That Springfield Is In

Arts & Photography

Split/Lip Press

This expanded edition adds sixteen new exercises designed to inspire creativity and help poets hone their skills. Each exercise includes a clearly-stated learning objective, historical background matter on the particular subgenre being explored, and an example written by undergraduates at Western Kentucky University. The text also analyzes work by leading American poets including Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel and Dean Young. The book's five chapters correspond with the five canons of classical rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.

The Poetry Gymnasium: 110 Proven Exercises to Shape Your Best Verse, 2d ed.

McFarland

Tom Hunley’s Here Lies is an entirely delightful book of poems, a rarity in many ways as much of 21st Century poetry is unapproachably dull and too serious about itself. Hunley, page after page, delivers comic insight and wit into the dark matter of living and dying. If life is too serious to take seriously, then Hunley gives the reader access to the cosmic joke and keeps us enthralled—by the music he brings to his poems and by the strange newness in which he sees. Here Lies is not necessarily the beginning of an epitaph, nor the beginning of a limerick, but it may be the introduction to some grandiose untruth. Here, in this place where we live and breathe, are the lies that make us silly creatures. Hunley leads us into the valley of death and gives us cause to laugh about it.

Here Lies

Poetry

Stephen F. Austin University Press

The Loneliest Whale in the World

Terrapin Books

Poetry. WHAT FEELS LIKE LOVE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS brings a selection of new poems that grapple with the challenges of raising an autistic son, adopting a teenage daughter from foster care, and learning of a friend's suicide together with the best work from Tom C. Hunley's six previous collections.

What Feels Like Love: New and Selected Poems

Self-Help

Death & Grief

C&R Press

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Books by Hunley, Tom C.