I am pleased, make that thrilled, to announce the publication of Poetic Amusement by Ray Hammond. Now you no longer have to be afraid to ask "Where do poems come from?" I've been referring to Ray's work in this book for years. Now you can read the complete argument for yourself. Here is the book description:
Originally written in 2000 as his Master’s thesis, Raymond P. Hammond’s Poetic Amusement has been passed around underground as a digital file for ten years among those associated with The New York Quarterly. As provocative today as it was when it was written, what began as Hammond’s observations of the influence of “po’ biz” and writing programs on contemporary American poetry became a timeless treatise on poetry itself. Using his experience with NYQ and devouring many literary critics across the ages from the ancient Greeks to contemporary critics, Hammond examines at once both our current literary environment and the essence of poetry. In seeking to answer the questions “What is poetry?” and “Where does poetry come from?” for himself, he encourages readers to ask those questions for and of themselves as well. Relevant and accessible to readers and writers of poetry and to those who think they don’t know or want to know what poetry is, Poetic Amusement will anger, elevate and inspire all those who read it.
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and Barnes&Noble now!