Becoming Poetry

“Jay Rogoff, one of our most consistently interesting poets, shows he is also one of our best critics of poetry. Becoming Poetry features brilliant essays on the differences between poetry and song, Shakespeare’s sonnets, and Williams’s struggle with Pound in Paterson, and a deft survey of contemporary poets. On poetic accent and metrical form, he is profoundly instructive. Every lover of poetry will want this book.” ~David Mikics, author of Slow Reading in a Hurried Age

“Becoming Poetry earns its title, marking the reciprocities between the poem and the means involved in writing it. Rogoff, a poet, brings a watchmaker’s attention to poems’ workings in arresting, precisely considered prose. The immersive process of becoming poetry, which Rogoff makes legible, discloses the most enduring symbiosis between language and being.” ~JoEllen Kwiatek, author of Study for Necessity

“Rogoff earns a proud place in the grand tradition of the poet-critic. His experience with poetic craft yields insight, sympathy, and candor in discussing his fellow practitioners.” ~Terence Diggory, author of William Carlos Williams and the Ethics of Painting

“A well-made account of the inner workings of poems from a contemporary virtuoso of the craft. With a teacher’s precision and a critic’s flair, Rogoff examines how poets create the illusions that make a poem last. These splendid essays hold the technical and the numinous in artful tension as they demonstrate how poets become their poetry.” ~Maggie Greaves, author of Lyric Poetry and Space Exploration from Einstein to the Present