Strange Terrain
A Poetry Handbook for the Reluctant Reader
by Alice B. Fogel
Strange Terrain fills an empty place. It is an essential resource for anyone who wants to feel more comfortable with reading poetry: individuals, reading groups, teachers, even friends and families of poets. In eight simple steps, award-winning poet and teacher Alice B. Fogel offers readers the tools they need to make their own confident way through poetry’s strange terrain.
“Readers who have followed the steps of this guide carefully will not reach Step 8 feeling cheated because they still don’t have a formula for unlocking every poetry secret. Rather, armed with knowledge of how a poem’s shape, words, sound, images, emotions, thoughts, and literary devices work to build, communicate, and deepen the mystery, readers are likely to sigh with relief that there still is plenty in poetry to wonder about, to feel but not articulate, to sense but not say.”
—From the Foreword by Brock Dethier, Director, Utah State University Writing Program“Great advice, good humor, excellent examples . . . and not textbooky. Playful and accessible, the continuing point that you don’t have to ‘get’ poems to get them will ease a lot of minds. This is an important work on a mysterious subject—the reading of poetry. I learned a lot. Painlessly.”
— Rebecca Rule, author of Could Have Been Worse
About the Author
ALICE B.FOGEL has taught reading, writing, and other arts programs for all ages in a variety of venues, from colleges to clubs, primary schools to summer institutes. A co-founder of the New Hampshire Young Writers Conference, she has presented programs through arts and humanities councils, at the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, and elsewhere. Alice’s most recent book of poems, Be That Empty, was a national poetry bestseller in 2008, and her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including the Best American Poetry series. She is available to lead reading group discussions, professional development workshops, or any other programs for exploring the world of poetry. For more information about Alice, please visit www.alicebfogel.com.
208 pp, Paperback
ISBN 978-0-9801672-5-2
Special February price: $16.95)
Publication Date: June 1, 2009
