I don't think we read how-to-write-poetry books on its art and craft to learn how to DIY but to appreciate the writers of those books if they are able to make their books interesting. In the course of it we may or may not pick up some helpful tips on how to write poetry, but the aim of those writers is not exactly, I would think, to help us hone poetry writing skills but to show us how intention may be allied to performance and whether it can be said to have succeeded in terms of effect or affect on the reader, this leading more to questions of criticism and appreciation than of teaching how to write poetry. Learning of alliteration, assonance and consonance, for instance, and then reading of lines supposedly about the cooing of doves and the immemorial murmur of bees in elms, the aim is to make the reader ask is the alliteration done on purpose to imitate the sound of the thing mentioned and is it effective in how the reader perceives it being coincidental with the writer's intention, in which case the writer is said to have succeeded etc. This is of course a very new critical close reading approach and example I have given, but I was addressing a concern raised by Vivek that the writing of poetry is best learned by those reading lots of it, good examples, and not books on the art and craft of poetry. Neat divisions don't exist, so to end with, it is possible to learn by reading poems of masters and books on writing poetry just as it is possible to not learn how to write 'good' poetry, whatever that means to each individual, either way. I was reading the list of books presented, they all come from the West. Except for the one posted later by Vivek by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. Having both written poetry and written a small pamphlet on how to write poetry found here "https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/222992", and read enough of poetry and of these books my own personal contribution is more than these books I have been helped largely by manifestos in trying to figure out a modus operandi to how to write poetry, or a strategy or an overall game plan, or even a specific way of approach or philosophy as to why one writes poetry and what or how so am putting some links here based on things I read that influenced me in my younger days.
https://www.societyforasianart.org/…/manifesto_futurista.pdf
https://www.tcf.ua.edu/…/SurManif…/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm
http://writing.upenn.edu/libr…/Tzara_Dada-Manifesto_1918.pdf
http://writing.upenn.edu/libra…/Blast/Blast1-1_Manifesto.pdf - brilliant!
http://www.languageisavirus.com/…/william-s-burroughs-cut-u…
(this last link is exquisite also for the generators making poetry redundant, despite the seriousness noticed in its practitioners these days.)
(this last link is exquisite also for the generators making poetry redundant, despite the seriousness noticed in its practitioners these days.)
I am unable to include Ungaretti and Mandelstam as the pdfs are not on the net.
My list has the same problem which is it is also Eurocentric or American, except for link to my book and the rasa theory one but all the same I think going through these things has helped me a lot in framing welcome diversionary apperçus into poetry and out of it so I share it believing it may help others on the site too
My list has the same problem which is it is also Eurocentric or American, except for link to my book and the rasa theory one but all the same I think going through these things has helped me a lot in framing welcome diversionary apperçus into poetry and out of it so I share it believing it may help others on the site too