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.
"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
"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
Wild Civility
Passionate, resilient, rich with wit and word play, these poems affirm David Biespiel’s increasing stature as a poet of remarkable accomplishment and promise.
David Biespiel’s long poetic lines crackle with rhythmic energy and a jazzy, bittersweet richness of language. "I’ve come to imagine the nine-line sonnet to be like one of those classic Thunderbirds," says Biespiel, "something distinctly American: wide, roomy, and with a robust engine." The civility of the poems is the form; the wildness is the bristling energy of the language.
"The poems here shuffle between registers and tones, use deliberately mismatched diction . . . Biespiel's best in this untraditional vein are the ones with the clearest connection to lyric poetry.”
— David Orr, Poetry
"Biespiel is a true poetic innovator."
— The Portland Mercury
"[Wild Civility] demonstrates the poet's...sparse, free verse lyrics concerned with exterior landscape and quiet observation-smart counterpoints to Biespiel's reinvented sonnets. They allow the reader a moment to breathe, reflect, and appreciate the dynamic personality of Wild Cilivity."
— Rain Taxi Review of Books
"Like microprocessors, the poems in Wild Civility deliver an almost incalculable amount of information instantaneously. As a result, they demonstrate the pure and powerful recombinant energy of language that is the essence of lyric poetry."
— Michael Collier, Director, Bread Loaf Writers Conference
*****
Wild Civility
University of Washington Press
2003