Smitten with the Written

This anthology isn't a polished how-to guide-no Recipe for a New Poem, no universal Ingredients for Writing a Poem. Instead, this collection explores the real, messy interior of the intimate and unruly relationship between the poet and the page.

63 distinct voices gather-sometimes addressing Dear Reader, sometimes insisting Read Me, sometimes turning inward to the act of writing itself-tracing the tension between what a poet tries to say and what a poem wants to become.

With lyrical insight, introspective musings, and striking honesty, these poems move from Writing in the Margins into drafts, detours, and dead ends. They take on Things I've Googled in the Name of Poetry, confront the private Death of a Poet, and hold fast to the stubborn insistence that one is Still a Poet in the Afterlife.

The poems in this collection confess, resist, unravel, and rebuild-questioning form (Not a Run-On), mourning what's been lost (An Elegy for the Adverb), returning to the familiar (Yes, the Poets Are Writing About the Moon Again), and celebrating what persists: the impulse to create meaning one word after another.