Author Archives: sdgibson

Here are a few poems for us to talk about.

From David Starkey’s excellent Creative Writing, these are some strategies for starting a story.

First, from David Starkey’s Creative Writing, I.A. Richards coined the terms tenor for the subject to which a metaphor is applied and vehicle for the metaphoric term itself. If we say, to borrow an example from Aristotle’s Rhetoric, that a warrior was … Continue reading →

Here are suggestions on starting and examples of villanelles, prose poems, ghazals, pantoums, and the sestina.

From Patrick Gillespie’s “PoemShape” site, consider how he moves from a prose paragraph and works it into iambic pentameter lines. Gillespie’s lines are in italics; Plutarch’s aren’t. Here are the prose paragraphs he starts with: Therefore when she was sent unto … Continue reading →

Three by students: In contrast, there are other proposed solutions aimed at reducing recidivism. Recent Princeton MPA graduate and government consultant Daniel Edelman writes in the Stanford Social Innovation Review that, “By addressing head-on the financial troubles of people leaving … Continue reading →