David Biespiel cracks open the creative process as he candidly tracks his own development as a writer and challenges traditional assumptions about writing that can stifle creativity. The liberating message: Working past the brink of failure--being free to try and discard and try again--is what allows the creative process to playfully flourish, keeping the spirit open to unexpected discoveries. Both beginning and experienced writers—as well as artists, musicians, dancers, and anyone else on a creative path—will benefit from this elegant, surprising, and fresh perspective.
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"Finally, an anti-bullshit book on creativity!"
— James Marcus
"Does for the creative process what Strunk and White did for our approach to grammar and style. Indispensable."
— Marjorie Sandor
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"Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces instead of the advice de rigueur, is a well-spring of ideas for how to jump start the creative process, valuable examples of athletic and visual artists who exercise this proposed method, and, perhaps most importantly, oodles of empathy for the writer and artist who is battling their own stuck process and potentially self-doubt or frustration."
— Hazel & Wren
A Long High Whistle:
Selected Columns on Poetry
Oregon Book Award for Nonfiction
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"One of the best books about reading poetry you will ever find."
— Library Journal (starred review)
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Over the course of ten years, David Biespiel published a brief, dazzling essay on poetry every month in what became the longest-running newspaper column on poetry in the U.S.
Collected here for the first time, these enormously popular essays, many of which have been revised and expanded, offer a fresh and refreshing approach to the reading and writing of poetry. With passion, wit, and common sense, they articulate a profound and entertaining statement about the mysteries of poetry and about poetry's essential role in our civic and cultural lives. This collection will provide anyone, from the beginning poet to the mature writer to the lover of literature, with insights into what inspires poets, how poems are written and read, and how poetry situates itself in American life.
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"A perfect introduction to how to read a poem; Biespiel doesn't tell us how to read, instead he simply shows us. One of the best books about reading poetry you will ever find."
— Library Journal (starred review)
"A splendid meditation on reading and writing poetry."
— Critical Mass
"These columns are smart, entertaining, personal, and personable, qualities that allow them to speak to both card-carrying poetry lovers as well as people who have never heard of an iamb."
— The Rumpus
"Biespiel’s warmth and respect for his readers is reflected in prose that, like William Zinsser’s classic On Writing Well, makes us care about, and be alert to, the wonders of metaphor."
— Bostonia
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*****
A Long High Whistle: Selected Columns on Poetry
Antilever Books
2015