• These lessons, created for WinningWriters.com
• demonstrate a practical, craft-based revision
• of a poem from a contributor.

Teachers, help yourselves!

For Everyone!

• How to Respond to Criticism of Your Poetry
• A Look at Five 2011 Award-Winning Poems
• The Do and Don’t List

Some First Revision Techniques

• Questions to Ask Your First Draft
• Reducing Redundancy
• The Scrub
• Generosity

Making a Poem

• Story Vs. Poem
• Finding the Poem in Prose
• Diction Families
• Using Metaphors in Poems about Illness
• A Sense of Place
• Inhabiting Dramatic Personae
• The Most Powerful Device: Repetition
• Contemporary Rhyming
• Making Sound Pattern
• Punctuation? Absolutely!
• Reading a Multi-Part Poem
• Adding Complexity: the Fold

 Reading Poetry Better

• Understanding Modern English Language Haiku
• Text Message Poems: Um, Why?
• Comparative Strategies in Two Love Poems
• Comparative Strategies in Two Ekphrastics
• Embracing Form: Revision of a Triolet
• The Sestina Demystified
• Celebrating the Ballad

• Other Critical Essays
• Clothed in the Palette of Mourning: An Appreciation of Christina Lovin’s “Coal Country” plus Interview with Author (Please scroll past first essay.)
• How to Now: Listening to Haiku Poets
• The Intentional Ellipses: Haiku and it Relationship to Space in Notes from the Gean
• The Intentional Ellipses: Haiku and it Relationship to Space abridged reprint
• Seeking Enlightened Portrayals: Judging the Dolly Gray Awards
• Seeking Enlightened Portrayals: Judging the Dolly Gray Awards - Part II: A Tour of the Books
• A Revision of La Poire Hautaine in Poem, Revised: 54 Poems, Revisions, Discussions (Marion Street Press: 2008)
• Dark Card review of  poems by Rebecca Foust
• The Night Marsh review of  poems by Penny Harter
• No Sweeter Fat review of poems by Nancy Pagh
• Swallow,review of  poems by Jendi Reiter