Baron Wormser – författare

Concise and accessible, this guide to teaching the art of poetry from Shakespeare to contemporary poets enables anyone to learn about how poets approach their art. Teachers can use this book to explore any facet or era of poetry. Any reader can use it as an entryway into the art of poetry. Teaching the Art of Poetry shows poetry as a multi-faceted artistic process rather than a mystery on a pedestal. It demystifies the art of poetry by providing specific historical, social, and aesthetic contexts for each element of the art. It is a nuts-and-bolts approach that encourages teachers and students to work with poetry as a studio art--something to be explored, challenged, assembled and reassembled, imagined, and studied--all the things that an artist does to present poetry as a search for meaning. This book advocates poetry as an essential tool for aesthetic, cultural, and linguistic literacy. It portrays poetry as an art rather than a knowledge base, and methods for integrating the art of poetry into the school curriculum. The authors' intention is not to fill gaps; it is to change how poetry is presented in the classroom, to change how it is taught and how students think about it.Teaching the Art of Poetry:* Emphasizes hands-on experiences. Over 160 exercises focus attention on the dynamics of the art of poetry. Activities include group work, peer editing, critical thinking skills, revising drafts, focused reading, oral communication, listening skills, and vocabulary, as well as mechanics and usage. * Features a week-long lesson plan in each chapter to aid the teacher. These relate the main aspects of each chapter to classroom activities and, in addition, include a "Beyond the Week" section to promote further investigation of the topic. * Promotes an integrated approach to poetry. The examples used in each chapter show poetry as a living tradition. * Makes extensive use of complete poems along with extracts from many others. * Does not talk down to teachers--is teacher oriented and jargon free.

Concise and accessible, this guide to teaching the art of poetry from Shakespeare to contemporary poets enables anyone to learn about how poets approach their art. Teachers can use this book to explore any facet or era of poetry. Any reader can use it as an entryway into the art of poetry. Teaching the Art of Poetry shows poetry as a multi-faceted artistic process rather than a mystery on a pedestal. It demystifies the art of poetry by providing specific historical, social, and aesthetic contexts for each element of the art. It is a nuts-and-bolts approach that encourages teachers and students to work with poetry as a studio art--something to be explored, challenged, assembled and reassembled, imagined, and studied--all the things that an artist does to present poetry as a search for meaning. This book advocates poetry as an essential tool for aesthetic, cultural, and linguistic literacy. It portrays poetry as an art rather than a knowledge base, and methods for integrating the art of poetry into the school curriculum. The authors' intention is not to fill gaps; it is to change how poetry is presented in the classroom, to change how it is taught and how students think about it. Teaching the Art of Poetry: Emphasizes hands-on experiences. Over 160 exercises focus attention on the dynamics of the art of poetry. Activities include group work, peer editing, critical thinking skills, revising drafts, focused reading, oral communication, listening skills, and vocabulary, as well as mechanics and usage. Features a week-long lesson plan in each chapter to aid the teacher. These relate the main aspects of each chapter to classroom activities and, in addition, include a "Beyond the Week" section to promote further investigation of the topic. Promotes an integrated approach to poetry. The examples used in each chapter show poetry as a living tradition. Makes extensive use of complete poems along with extracts from many others.

A new edition of an evergreen back-to-nature book in the tradition of Thoreau.  For nearly twenty-five years, poet Baron Wormser and his family lived in a house in Maine with no electricity or running water. They grew much of their own food, carried water by hand, and read by the light of kerosene lamps. They considered themselves part of the “back to the land” movement, but their choice to live off the grid was neither a statement nor a protest: they simply had built their house too far from the road and could not afford to bring in power lines. Over the years, they settled into a life that centered on what Thoreau would have called “the essential facts.” In this graceful meditation, Wormser similarly spurns ideology in favor of observation, exploration, and reflection. “When we look for one thread of motive,” he writes, “we are, in all likelihood, deceiving ourselves.” His refusal to be satisfied with the obvious explanation, the single thread of motive, makes him a keen and sympathetic observer of his neighbors and community, a perceptive reader of poetry and literature, and an honest and unselfconscious analyst of his own responses to the natural world. The result is a series of candid personal essays on community and isolation, nature, civilization, and poetry. Lovely and rich, The Road Washes Out in Spring is an immersive read. A new preface by the author rounds out this new edition.

Selected by Alice Fulton as the Winner of the 1996 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry.

Baron Wormser is the author of three previous collections of poetry: The White Words (Houghton Mifflin, 1983), Good Trembling (Houghton Mifflin, 1985), and Atoms, Soul Music, and Other Poems (Paris Review Editions, 1989). Born and raised in Baltimore, he earned his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, his M.A. in English from the University of California, and his M.A. in Library Service from the University of Maine. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Harper's, The New Republic, and The Georgia Review. Currently, Wormser lives with his wife in Mercer, Maine, in their house which is powered by a two-panel solar unit and is located on forty-five acres of Maine woods. He is a Buddhist affiliated with the Kwan Um Zen school and works as a librarian for a rural school district."When is a mix of autobiography and good old storytelling that never forgets a basic writerly tenet: locality is the only universality. Whether the subject is Beethoven's maid hearing strange sounds, a deli waiter bemoaning his work or Wormser as a boy walking through Pikesville, Md., and imagining it's Baudelaire's Paris, the action in each poem is unique in its specific details. The insights the characters achieve, however, and the emotions they feel are universal. . . . Graced with humor, lust, and bracingnarrative momentum, Wormser's poetry presents a menagerie of wonderfully familiar strangers."-Publishers Weekly"A steadfast characteristic of Baron Wormser's poetry is his absolute honesty. In When, . . . he puts aside any expectations of poetic prettiness to take a clear, linguistically fresh look at issues such as AIDS, Vietnam, the ethics of fast-food consumption, and the seduction of Vegas. . . . Wormser's love of the world is evident, despite the searing light that he shines upon it."-Small Press Editor's Recommended Book, Amazon.com"The title When derives from Wormser's obsession with history. . . . This historical sense permeates his poems; it is critical to his approach to poetry. He is, in a manner of speaking, a time traveler. . . . Wormser makes references to people, objects, and events that define the time:

A fifth collection by this "fiction writer in a poet's body."

Baron Wormser, a master of the persona poem, is well known for his empathic exploration of possible lives. This fifth collection of poetry by this "fiction writer in a poet's body," includes an examination of his own life as well.Mulroney & Others provides glimpses of Wormser's childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, as well as accounts of Vietnam vets and draft dodgers, socialites and outcasts. Loyal readers will welcome his trademark poise, the elegant balance he achieves with understatement both metrically deft and intellectually intricate. These poems prove Anaïs Nin's insight that "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."Wormser's invitation to engage ourselves in seeing is irresistible, especially as he models the process with such impassioned interest. "'I know,' everyone is saying at once/To one another and the word-riddled universe. . . ." he writes. His poems tempt us to trade the obscurity of facile assumption for the powerful illumination of wonder. In Wormser's words, the universe is irrefutably personal.Baron Wormser is the author of four previous collections of poetry: The White Words (Houghton Mifflin, 1983), Good Trembling (Houghton Mifflin, 1985), Atoms, Soul Music, and Other Poems (Paris Review Editions, 1989), When (Sarabande Books, 1997), and co-author of Teaching the Art of Poetry: The Moves (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999). His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of journals including The Paris Review, Sewanee Review, The New Republic, Harper's, and Poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives with his wife in Hallowell, Maine."The particular gift in Wormser's work is in the narrative. . . . He is poised to record, to expose, to express, not to pounce. The language can sometimes ambush a reader with wonder, but Wormser never breaks a sweat. . . . Mulroney & Others is one of those rare books of poetry that will have resonance in the lives of nearly every reader. . . (he) mixes just the right amount of cleverness with a smart appreciation for language, humor, humanity, pain and love."-Ba

Alice Fulton’s praise of Wormser as an "unabashedly American poet" still rings true in this sixth collection, as does Sydney Lea’s view that Wormser has the gift to "speak, not sloganistically but literally, for us all." What will surprise readers is that each poem accomplishes all of this in only fourteen lines—each loose sonnet simultaneously deft, analytical, and wry.Baron Wormser is the author of six previous collections—The White Words, Good Trembling, Atoms, Soul Music and Other Poems, When, and Mulroney & Others—and is the co-author of Teaching the Art of Poetry. He was appointed Poet Laureate of Maine in 2000 and teaches at the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire. He lives in Hallowell, Maine.

“[Baron] Wormser is a beautiful writer of the meditative-narrative poem in the compassionate and lucid style of Frost, Hayden Carruth, and Donald Hall. Like those writers, his poems dignify rural lives, but also explore the national soul with particularly American integrity and frankness. Conversational, civilizing, thoughtful, and often funny, too, there are many extraordinary poems in these Scattered Chapters.”—Tony HoaglandBaron Wormser is the author of seven books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a memoir. He directs the Frost Place Conference and teaches in the Stonecoast MFA Program. He served as Poet Laureate of Maine and now lives in Vermont.

Baron Wormser brings to life the immense force poetry can have in people's lives. In stories funny, tender, sad, and edgy, the narrators register how poetry has changed how they see themselves, how they live, and what they care about. As it bends genres by adapting aspects of fiction, biography, essay and monologue, The Poetry Life shows how poetry can be lightning in the soul. "Baron Wormser has pulled off a miraculous feat-he has written a collection of stories that reveals the absolute necessity of poetry in our lives. His prose style is riveting, and his characters are as diverse as a phone book. Each voice conjures up a passionate portrait of inner life, telling us-through episodes both comic and tragic-that the world of the deceased poet remains eternally relevant to our own."-Clint McCown, author of The Weatherman: A Novel"'Poetry,' Baron Wormser writes, 'is about generosity.' So too are these ten stories you hold in your hands. They are about generosity. And mystery. And loneliness. And life. They are about how poetry helps us 'stay in our skins.' You will fall in love with these stories and with the ten poets who appear in them. What Baron Wormser says about William Carlos Williams, I say about him here, 'He nailed it.'"-Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle: A Novel"A book of stories not about poets but driven by the presence of poetry and the shadows of poets: madness undoubtedly. But the best kind of madness! With this book, Baron Wormser invites us to reconsider the connection between poetry and our lives, to remember that we really do live hungry for inner vision, for small insights that can save us from the slag heap of goofdom and pointlessness. It's a wonderful book. It's the kind of stuff that makes you want to stay in the world." -Tim Seibles, author of Buffalo Head Solos

The focus of Baron Wormser’s poetry over more than three decades has been the human drama of our trying to shape what is misshapen. In this, his tenth collection, he takes on a dizzying range of subjects from Diane Arbus to playground basketball to the fall of the Berlin Wall to Prospero to a suicide inquest. In all his poems, he pursues the complex gist that will at once betray and reveal the welter of feeling that informs a moment, a scene, or a life. For readers of poetry this book is the culmination of well over three decades of poetry writing, a book into which much experience of life and poetry has gone. It’s brought to light through the formal features of odes and villanelles.

Formally innovative poems that engage with history and the individual.In his eleventh poetry collection, Baron Wormser offers the wide range of subjects and imaginative approaches that his readers have come to expect. Touching on topics such as the Jewish resistance, Godard films, and the National Football League, The History Hotel opens the door to both political and personal histories. This collection also introduces us to unforgettable characters—we follow alongside speakers as they drive through Kansas, as they memorize Shakespeare sonnets, and as they rehearse a love affair that went south.As Wormser’s collection reminds us, the historical circumstances that touch, strengthen, or shatter a life are also key to understanding it. We all live in the History Hotel, where love, betrayal, hope, and despair go hand in hand. Showing those entangled hands is the work of these poems—poems that are alive to tradition but consistently inventive along the way.

Multi-genre literary master Baron Wormser’s new book is about people from the mid-twentieth century whose lives created ripple effects beyond their individuality. Including electrifying portraits of Rosa Parks, Hannah Arendt, Miles Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Willem de Kooning, among others, these are not conventional “biographical” essays. Wormser has created a molten, multi-dimensional prose that brings a reader into the visceral presence of these human catalysts.