Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Saturday, March 19, 2022

Poetry And The Modern World by Daiches David

Poetry And The Modern World by Daiches David

 

Poetry And The Modern World

by Daiches David 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS


I. The Legacy op Victorianism: Poetry at the End of the Nineteenth Century Page 1
II. Thomas Hardy A. E. Housman Manley Hopkins Page 17
III.Georgian Poetry Page 3
IV. War Poetry —The Imaoists — Post-war Satire The Sitwells Page 61
V. T. E. Hulme and T. S. Eliot Page 90
VI. T. S. Eliot Page 106 IX —Gerard
VII. W. B. Yeats I Page 128
VIII. W. B. Yeats—II: Page 156
IX. Poetry in the 1930’s—I: Cecil Day Lewis Page 190
X. Poetry in the 1930’s II: W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender Page 214
Epilogue Page 240
Index Page 243

FOREWORD  

 

 I have endeavored in the following pages to present certain aspects of modern English poetry and to discuss them in such a way as to throw some new light on poetic activity in the first forty years of the present century. This work is intended not as a complete history of English poetry during the period but rather as a series of what I hope are suggestive studies. I am well aware that I have omitted to mention many poets of ability: I have written only about those whom I felt able to discuss with some originality, and where I had nothing that I thought new or significant to say I have said nothing. I claim no finality for my views. It seems to me important—and more important than ever these days that a level of intelligent discourse about literature should be maintained. There is no single way to an understanding of the complex phenomena of culture; but, if those who are interested talk to each other reasonably and with intelligence, we shall gradually learn more about these important matters. I should like to think of my work as a modest contribution to a symposium. Acknowledgment is due to Poetry: A Magazine of Verse for permission to reprint parts of an essay on W. H. Auden which first appeared there.
 

D. D.


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