Poets Unbound

Book excerpt: Everyone has his or her own idea of what poetry is. In Poets Unbound you have fifteen perspectives. Whether your taste runs to formal rhyming poems, imagistic depictions of feeling, or the no-frills language of the everyday, there is something here for you. There are poems celebrating life, poems of mourning, nature poems, city poems, poems about mythology and popular culture, animals, God, and mankind. This collection is as diverse as its authors, but whatever the differences, the poems are united by the shared value that poetry is not only important but necessary. Every poet in this book has handed copies of his/her poems around a table to half a dozen people with editing pens to ask, "how could this poem be better?" Every poet in this book has left a meeting feeling sorry that he/she asked, and come back the next week to hear more, trusting that a poem important enough to write, is important enough to craft. Poets Unbound contains many styles, subjects, and viewpoints. Most of all, it contains the distinct voices of people who believe poetry a vital way to communicate the individual world.