Seattle Public Library - Washington Center for the Book - The Poetry Toolbox
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Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library
If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
The Poetry Toolbox
Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and
Their Craft by Bill Moyers
Jane Hirshfield
Mark Doty
Toolbox Contents
For more information, contact:
Washington Center for the Book
Seattle Public Library 1000 Fourth Avenue
Seattle, WA 98104-1193 (206) 386-4100 (206) 386-4672 fax http://www.spl.org/wacentbook/centbook.html
Nancy Pearl, Executive Director
(206) 386-4184
[email protected]
Chris Higashi, Associate Director
(206) 386-4650
[email protected]
This reading group toolbox was developed by the Washington Center for the
Book at the Seattle Public Library. It was made possible through a grant from the
Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds. The Washington Center for the Book is one of
eight member organizations of the Audiences for Literature Network, a national
network of literary centers made possible by the Funds.
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Seattle Public Library - Washington Center for the Book - The Poetry Toolbox: Contents
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Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library
If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
A Poetry Toolbox
Contents:
Bill Moyers
Jane Hirshfield
Mark Doty
What Is Poetry?
Some Suggestions to Begin
General Questions on Poetry
Fooling with Words: Questions for Discussion
"The Embrace" by Mark Doty
"Rebus" by Jane Hirshfield
Recommended Reading
Poetry Web Sites
Book Club How-To's: Tips for Book Discussions Bibliography of Works by Jane Hirshfield
Bibliography of Works by Mark Doty
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Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library
If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
Bill Moyers
Television journalist and writer Bill Moyers was born in 1934 in Hugo,
Oklahoma, and raised in Marshall, Texas, where his father held a variety of
blue-collar jobs. Moyers began his journalism career as a cub reporter on the
Marshall News Messenger and went on to graduate from the University of
Texas and receive a second degree from the Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary.
In an interview with Contemporary Authors, Moyers reminisced about his
youth. "Marshall," he said, "was a wonderful place to be poor if you had to be
poor. It was a genteel poverty in which people knew who you were and kind of
looked after you. Status was important in Marshall, but more important was
being part of the community."
As a sophomore at North Texas State University, he wrote to Lyndon B.
Johnson, offering to help with Johnson's reelection campaign. Johnson hired
Moyers for a summer internship and persuaded him to transfer to University of
Texas at Austin, where he studied journalism and theology. Despite earning a
theology degree, Moyers never served as a full time minister. Instead he went
on to work in the political arena, first as special assistant to Lyndon Johnson,
then as associate director of public affairs of the newly created Peace Corps,
and eventually as its deputy director. After the Peace Corps, he became
Johnson's press secretary.
Moyers left public service in 1967 to become publisher of Newsday, where he
remained for three years, helping the paper earn 33 major journalism awards
including two Pulitzer Prizes.
In 1970, Moyers set out on a 13,000-mile adventure across America to
interview "ordinary folk." This resulted in Listening to America: A Traveler
Rediscovers His Country, which was published by Harper's Magazine Press in
1971. His career in public television began that year as well, when "Bill Moyers'
Journal" debuted.
During his 30 years in the media, Moyers has received more than 30 Emmy
Awards for excellence. His programs reflect his many interests. They have
included "Healing and the Mind," "Genesis," "Joseph Campbell and the Power
of Myth," "Creativity," "A Walk Through the Twentieth Century," "Death and
Dying," "The Language of Life: An Ode to Poets and Their Artistry," and
"Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft."
Poetry has been an enduring passion for Moyers ever since high school, when
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a favorite teacher fed him cookies and read poetry to him. Moyers also fondly
remembers the other teachers who read poetry aloud in their classes, inspiring
in him a love for language and a desire to share poetry with audiences as often
as possible. "They believed that poetry required attention before it invited
analysis. I can still hear the music of their voices. I was 14 then; I'm over 65
now. That's the power of a teacher over the soul of a student when the
alchemy is working. Poetry is that alchemy," he recalls.
In his recent book, Fooling With Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft,
Moyers expresses his passionate commitment to language and pays tribute to
the relevance of poetry in daily life. In a series of conversations with 11 poets,
Moyers engages the reader as he explores the poets' sources of creativity and
imagination. "Poets live the lives all of us live," says Moyers, "with one
difference. They have the power - the power of the word - to create a world of
thoughts and emotions others can share. We only have to learn to listen."
Moyers and his wife and collaborator, Judith Davidson Moyers, live in New
Jersey. They have three grown children.
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If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield is an award-winning poet and translator with a special interest
in Zen Buddhism.
When she was in the first grade, Hirshfield wrote on a large sheet of yellow
lined paper, "I want to be a writer when I grow up." At age nine, she bought her
first book - a collection of haiku. As a student at Princeton she developed her
own major, creative writing and literature in translation.
In her twenties, Hirshfield decided to study Zen Buddhism. Originally believing
she would study Zen for only one month, she instead was closely associated
with the San Francisco Zen Center for eight years, including spending three
years living in a monastery deep in the California wilderness, an experience
very different from her childhood on the lower east side of Manhattan.
During those three years she stopped writing entirely. "I had to be willing to
walk away from poetry, perhaps forever, before I felt I could do it at all," she
said.
"I felt that I'd never make much of a poet if I didn't know more than I knew at
that time about what it means to be a human being," Hirshfield told an
interviewer. "I don't think poetry is based just on poetry; it is based on a
thoroughly lived life. And so I couldn't just decide I was going to write no matter
what; I first had to find out what it means to live."
After leaving her formal Zen training in the early 1980s, Hirshfield began to
write and teach, earning numerous grants and awards. She also returned to
work translating Japanese women's poetry.
The literary traditions of both the East and West have always been important to
Hirshfield. In an interview in Contemporary Authors, she cites as influences
"the Greek and Roman lyrics, the English sonnet, those foundation stones of
American poetry - Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson - and 'modern' poets
from T.S. Eliot to Anna Akhmatova to C.P. Cavafy to Pablo Neruda." She adds
that they "all have added something to my knowledge of what is possible in
poetry." Her work also reflects her interest in, and study of, classical Chinese
poets Tu Fu, Li Po, Wang Wei, and Han Shan; classical Japanese Heian-era
poets Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu; and such lesser known traditions as
Eskimo and Nahuatl poetry.
Hirshfield's poems are marked by their compassionate tone. She often writes
about nature and the unity of subject and object. In an interview in
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Contemporary Authors, she says, "I am interested in poems that find a clarity
without simplicity; in a way of thinking and speaking that does not exclude
complexity but also does not obscure; in poems that know the world in many
ways at once - heart, mind, voice and body."
To support herself as a poet, Hirshfield has evolved what she calls a "tripod" of
vocations: teacher, writer, editor. Although she has chosen not to take a
permanent academic appointment, Hirshfield has been a visiting professor at
various universities and serves regularly on the staff of several writers
conferences.
Hirshfield has received such honors as The Poetry Center Book Award,
fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, Columbia
University's Translation Center Award, the Commonwealth Club of California
Poetry Medal, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Her work has
appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Nation,
The American Poetry Review, and many other publications.
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Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library
If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
Mark Doty
Mark Doty, raised in a family that never understood him, believes his life was
saved by his discovery of art.
Born in Marysville, Tennessee, in 1953 to dispirited and disconnected parents,
Doty spent much of his childhood living in anonymous suburban settings from
Memphis to Tucson, and from Florida to California, as his family followed his
engineer father to various jobs.
During his awkward and painful childhood, Doty was aware that his behavior
was not typically boy-like. In his memoir, Firebird (HarperCollins, 1999), Doty
tells the story of himself as a ten-year-old attired in a top hat, cane and red
chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's "Get Happy," by his
aghast mother who exclaimed, "Son, you're a boy!"
In Firebird, he describes how he experimented with drugs, drifted into an illadvised marriage, and began to repeat his family's self-destructive patterns.
But he was able to find solace in dance, art, acting, and in writing. "I believe
that art saved my life," he states.
When Doty was a high school student in Tucson, Arizona, the poet Richard
Shelton read his early poems and encouraged his writing. Most importantly,
Doty remembers, Shelton showed him "that one could have a life as a poet,
that literature or any art might be the center of one's experience."
Doty graduated from Drake University in Des Moines and received an M.F.A.
from Goddard College in Vermont, where he met his long-term lover, Wally
Roberts. The couple lived together for 12 years in Manhattan and
Provincetown, Massachusetts. Wally's illness and subsequent death from
AIDS in January 1994 would become the central factor in Doty's maturation
both as a person and as a poet.
Doty's poetry has certain signature characteristics, including a deep concern
for political and social issues. Doty has written that he wants his own poems to
turn more towards the social, to the common conditions of American life in our
particular, uncertain moment. For Doty, then, the personal is political. Many of
his poems reflect his own intense experiences of grief and demonstrate his
ability to create beauty out of despair.
Katie Bolick of The Cortland Review describes his poems as written with
"lyrical language and wealth of detail." Interviewer Mark Wunderlich echoes the
sentiment. "His poems are full of the details of a lived life. They are poems of
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intimacy rather than ones that draw attention to the mask the poet wears."
Often the observation of the physical world is integrated into a deeply personal
and intimate narrative.
In an interview with Wunderlich, Doty adds, "I am trying to talk about public life
without resorting to public language. I am trying to address what scares and
preoccupies me now. The project seems fraught with peril - part of the reason
we don't write political poems in America is that most of us feel, well, what do I
know? What authority do I have to speak? Where does my connection to any
broad perspective on social life lie? I don't see myself ever becoming a
polemical poet or writing to advance a particular cause, but at the same time I
can't believe that it's okay for us to go on tending our private gardens while
there is so much around us demanding to be addressed."
Doty explains that his homosexuality is central to his poetry. "Beginning in the
early eighties with the process of coming out, I felt a great thirst for directness,
an imperative to find language with which to be direct to myself, which is of
course the result of having been like many young gay men, divided from
myself, from the authentic character of my desire. … And the result of that for
me, once I began to break through the dissembling, was a thirst for the
genuine."
Doty is one of the most celebrated writers of his generation - the winner of a
National Book Critics Circle Award and the first American to earn the T.S. Eliot
Prize in Britain. He has also received a Whiting Writer's Award, fellowships
from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts,
and the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. Doty has taught at Goddard College, Columbia University School of
the Arts, Sarah Lawrence, the Iowa Writers Workshop, and the University of
Utah. Currently he teaches at the University of Houston and divides his time
between Provincetown and Houston.
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Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library
If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
What Is Poetry?
Over the last two thousand years, it seems that almost anyone associated with
literature and the literary life has had an opinion on poetry and poets. Many
grappled with trying to define poetry.
American poet Archibald MacLeish wrote in his poem "Ars Poetica," "A poem
should not mean, but be."
The Roman poet Horace said, "poetry gives old words new meanings."
Ezra Pound believed poetry was "news that stayed news."
Edgar Allen Poe defined poetry as "the rhythmical creation of beauty."
Wallace Stevens felt that poetry "is the violence within that protects us from the
violence without."
Pablo Neruda wrote that "the closest thing to poetry is a loaf of bread on a
ceramic dish, or piece of wood lovingly carved, even if by clumsy hands."
Gerard Manley Hopkins felt that poetry was "speech framed…to be heard for
its own sake and interest even and above its interest of meaning."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge believed that while "prose = words in their best order;
poetry = the best words in the best order."
Chinese poet Wei T'ai wrote, "Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the
feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling, for
as soon as the mind responds and connects with the thing the feeling shows in
the words; this is how poetry enters deeply into us."
Charles Simic believes that "poems are other people's snapshots in which we
recognize ourselves."
Odysseus Elytis feels that "poetry begins where death is robbed of the last
word."
Karl Shapiro said, "poetry is a way of seeing things rather than a way of saying
things."
Henrik Ibsen believed that "the business of a poet is fundamentally to see, not
to analyze."
W.B. Yeats believed that poetry is what we make out of a quarrel with
ourselves.
Carl Sandburg wrote in 1923, "poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of
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hyacinths and biscuits."
Robert Frost understood poetry to be "a way of taking life by the throat."
In the nineteenth century, Joseph Roux wrote, "poetry is truth in its Sunday
clothes."
"Poetry communicates before it is understood" - T.S. Eliot
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Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library
If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
Some Suggestions to Begin
1. Read a poem aloud so as to hear the words. Poetry is written to be
heard. Every word is therefore important.
2. Read a poem more than once. You cannot get the full meaning of a good
poem on a single reading.
3. Keep a dictionary by your side and use it.
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General Questions on Poetry
1. How is reading poetry different from the way you read a work of prose?
2. In his introduction to Fooling with Words, Bill Moyers writes, "The sounds
of poems are pleasing to me, and I enjoy a poem read aloud even when I
do not wholly understand it." What makes you like a poem even if you
don't understand it?
3. National Poetry Month, Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project, a
proliferation of poetry Web sites, poetry readings and poetry slams are all
signs of the power and place of poetry in people's lives today. Why do
you think poetry is experiencing this resurgence?
4. As you look over the various definitions of poetry on the What Is Poetry?
page, which of them appeal to you? Which ones ring true? Which ones
false?
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Fooling with Words: Questions for Discussion
1. What does Stanley Kunitz's poem "The Layers" reveal about Kunitz as a
man?
2. Coleman Banks says that he hopes his poem "No Finale" "makes the
ordinary seem ecstatic." What does he mean by that? Do you think he
succeeds?
3. Mark Doty says that he is always trying to make his poems "available" to
his readers. What experience does he describe in "New Dog"? Can you
share the experience he describes?
4. Deborah Garrison says that she wants her poems to sound like the way
people really talk. How well does she accomplish this (if she does) in "A
Kiss" and "An Idle Thought"?
5. Lorna Dee Cervantes writes a biography of a childhood friend in "For
Virginia Chavez." She uses everyday, non-poetic language. What makes
this a poem? Do you feel you know Virginia Chavez? You might want to
compare some other biographies-in-poetry, especially those by Edwin
Arlington Robinson, including "Miniver Cheevy," "Richard Cory," and
"Reuben Bright."
6. Jane Hirshfield's "The Poet" is a picture of a writer. What is important to
the writer? Hirshfield is a Buddhist. Do you find evidence of her beliefs in
this poem? What do you think the last five lines of the poem have to do
with writing poetry? With living?
7. Kurtis Lamkin is a musician as well as a poet. (He plays the kora, a West
African stringed instrument something like a harp.) What evidence of
music do you find in his poem "those crazy beach girls"? What is the
effect of all the repeated words and phrases in the poem? Do you
suppose that hearing the poet read these poems (or even hearing
someone else read them aloud) would or could change the appeal of the
poems?
8. Shirley Geok-lin Lim has chosen a very difficult and strict poetic form for
her "Pantoun for Chinese Women." What does the strictness of the form
add to the poem's meaning for you? What is your emotional response to
this poem? Are there particular lines in the poem that led you to this
response? Lim's poem "Learning to Love America" is written in free
verse. How does Lim describe her attachment to her new country?
9. Paul Muldoon's "Symposium" is made up of a series of homilies, or
sayings that we are all familiar with. What is the effect of Muldoon's
twisting them around in new and different iterations? Do you agree with
Moyers that the poem makes no sense? Why do you suppose the
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audience loved hearing Muldoon read it? "The Boundary Commission" is
a very different sort of poem. How differently would a reader living in
Ireland understand this poem than those of us living in Seattle?
10. What do you think Marge Piercy means in the last two lines of "To Be of
Use"? What is work that isn't real? How can a pitcher cry out for water to
carry? In "For the young who want to," Piercy writes about being a writer.
Compare this with Hirshfield's poem "The Poet." What similarities do you
find is these poets' attitudes? What differences?
11. Why is Robert Pinsky's poem "ABC" a poem and not merely a series of
words in the order of the alphabet?
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If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
The Embrace
You weren't well or really ill yet either; just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace. I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead. I knew that to be true still, even in the dream. You'd been out - at work maybe? -
having a good day, almost energetic. We seemed to be moving from some old house where we'd lived, boxes everywhere, things in disarray: that was the story of my dream, but even asleep I was shocked out of narrative by your face, the physical fact of your face: inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert. Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain? So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face, your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth and clarity of you - warm brown tea - we held
each other for the time the dream allowed. Bless you. You came back, so I could see you once more, plainly, so I could rest against you without thinking this happiness lessened anything, without thinking you were alive again. - Mark Doty
Sweet Machine (Harper Perennial, 1998)
Questions on "The Embrace"
1. What is the tone of this poem? That is, what is the speaker feeling as he
relates his dream?
2. Why does the speaker compare the "voice and clarity" of his dead lover
to "warm brown tea'"?
3. Why does the speaker talk - in the last stanza - about this happiness not
lessening anything? What doesn't it lessen?
4. Why is the speaker glad that the dream did not make him think that the
lover was alive again?
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If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
Rebus
You work with what you are given the red clay of grief, the black clay of stubbornness going on after. Clay that tastes of care or carelessness, clay that smells of the bottom of rivers or dust. Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live, each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table. There are honeys so bitter no one would willingly choose to take them. The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear. This rebus - slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life -
when will I learn to read it plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire? Not to understand it, only to see. As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty, we become our choices. Each yes, each no continues, this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup. The ladder leans into its darkness. The anvil leans into its silence. The cup sits empty. How will I enter this question the clay has asked? - Jane Hirshfield Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins, 2000) Questions on "Rebus"
1. What is a rebus? Why did Hirshfield use it as the title?
2. What is the question the clay has asked?
3. What does it mean to read something "uncolored by hope or desire?/Not
to understand it, only to see"?
4. What does it mean that "we become our choices"?
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If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
Recommended Reading
Sam Hamill, Editor: The Gift of Tongues: Twenty-Five Years of Poetry from
Copper Canyon Press (Copper Canyon Press, 1996)
Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry (Harcourt,
1999)
Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (Harper Perennial,
1998)
Czeslaw Milosz, A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of
Poetry (Harcourt, 1996)
Jeffrey Paine, Editor, The Poetry of Our World: An International Anthology of
Contemporary Poetry (HarperCollins, 2000)
Molly Peacock, How to Read a Poem: And Start a Poetry Circle (Riverhead
Books, 2000)
Laurence Perrine, Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry (9th Ed.)
(Harcourt College Publishers, 1996)
Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz, Editors, Americans' Favorite Poems: The
Favorite Poem Project Anthology (W.W. Norton, 2000)
Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets (Vintage Books, 2000).
Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, Ed., The Making of a Poem: A Norton
Anthology of Poetic Forms (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998)
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Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library
If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
Poetry Web Sites
Poetry Daily: http://www.poems.com
The Wondering Minstrels: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/
The Academy of American Poets: http://www.poets.org/index.cfm
Poets & Writers Online: http://www.pw.org
Poetry Society of America: http://www.poetrysociety.org
Poets House: http://www.poetshouse.org
The Atlantic Monthly's Poetry Pages:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/
The Internet Poetry Archive: http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/
The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University and American Poetry
Archives: http://www.sfsu.edu/~newlit/
The American Poetry Review: http://www.aprweb.org
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Seattle Public Library - Washington Center for the Book - Book Club How-to's
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Book Club How-to's
Ideas for setting up a book discussion group from the Washington Center for the Book at the
Seattle Public Library. See the Calendar of Events for schedules of book discussion groups at
Seattle Public Library branches.
Before you get started:
Once you figure out these details, the fun begins - reading and talking about good books!
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When, how often, and where will your book club meet?ss How long will the meetings last?
Will you serve food? What's the role of the leader, or will you even designate a leader? What types of books do you want to read - fiction, memoirs, nonfiction, a combination?
Contemporary works, classics, both? Who makes up the questions for the group to discuss? Choosing books for discussion:
Choosing what books to read is one of the most enjoyable, often frustrating, and certainly one of the
most important activities the group will undertake. One of the best parts of belonging to a book
discussion group is that you will be introduced to books you're unfamiliar with, and books that fall
outside your regular areas of interest. This is good! Remind people that there can be a big difference
between "a good read" and "a good book for a discussion." (See next section.) It's always a good idea
to select your group's books well in advance (at least three months works well). You don't want to have
to spend time at each meeting deciding what to read next.
What makes a particular book a good one for a discussion?
Probably the most important criteria are that the book be well written and that it explores basic human
truths. Good books for discussion have three-dimensional characters who are forced to make difficult
choices, under difficult situations, whose behavior sometimes makes sense and sometimes doesn't.
Good book discussion books present the author's view of an important truth and sometimes send a
message to the reader.
During a book discussion, what you're really talking about is everything that the author hasn't said - all
those white spaces on the printed page. For this reason, books that are heavily plot driven (most
mysteries, westerns, romances, and science fiction/fantasy) don't lend themselves to book discussions.
In genre novels and some mainstream fiction (and often in nonfiction), the author spells out everything
for the reader, so that there is little to say except, "I loved the book" or "I hated it" or "Isn't that
interesting."
(Incidentally, this "everything that the author hasn't said" idea is why poetry makes such a rich topic for
discussion.)
Other good choices for discussions are books that have ambiguous endings, where the outcome of the
novel is not clear. For example, there is no consensus about what actually happened in Tim O'Brien's In
the Lake of the Woods, Sara Maitland's Ancestral Truths, or James Buchan's The Persian Bride.
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It's important to remind the group that not every member is going to like every book the group chooses.
Everyone may read the same book, but in fact, every member is reading a different book. Everyone
brings her own unique history, memories, background, and influences. Everyone is in a different place
in his life when he reads the book. All of these differences influence the reader's experience of a book
and why she may like or dislike it.
There are also pairs of books that make good discussions. These can be discussed at one meeting or
read and discussed in successive months. Some examples include A Dangerous Friend by Ward Just
and The Quiet American by Graham Greene, The Hours by Michael Cunningham and Mrs. Dalloway by
Virginia Woolf, and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and King Leopold's Ghost by Adam
Hochschild.
Finally, there are some books that raise so many questions and issues that you just can't stop talking
about them. These may not be enjoyed by everyone in the group, but they're bound to lead to spirited
discussions: Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying, Russell Banks's The Sweet Hereafter, Andre
Dubus III's House of Sand and Fog, Frederick Busch's Girls.
For specific recommendations, see Recommended Books for Discussion.
How to read a book for discussion:
The best books are those that insinuate themselves into your experience: They reveal an important
truth or provide a profound sense of kinship between reader and writer. Searching for, identifying, and
discussing these truths deepen the reader's appreciation of the book.
Reading for a book discussion - whether you are the leader or simply a participant - differs from reading
purely for pleasure.
Asking questions, reading carefully, imagining yourself in the story, analyzing style and structure, and
searching for personal meaning in a work of literature all enhance the work's value and the discussion
potential for your group
1. Make notes and mark pages as you go.
Ask questions of yourself and mark down pages you might want to refer back to. Making notes
as you go slows down your reading but saves you the time of searching out important passages
later.
2. Ask tough questions of yourself and the book.
Asking questions of yourself as you read means you don't know the answer yet, and sometimes
you never will discover the answers. Don't be afraid to ask hard questions because often the
author is presenting difficult issues for that very purpose. Look for questions that may lead to indepth conversations with your group and make the book more meaningful.
3. Analyze the themes of the book .
Try to analyze the important themes of a book and to consider what premise the author started
with. Imagine an author mulling over the beginnings of the story, asking himself, "what if … "
questions.
4. Get to know the characters.
When you meet the characters in the book, place yourself at the scene. Think of them as you do
the people around you. Think about their faults and their motives. What would it be like to
interact with them? Are the tone and style of their dialogue authentic? Read portions aloud to
get to know the voices of the characters.
5. Notice the structure of the book.
Sometimes an author uses the structure of the book to illustrate an important concept or to
create a mood. Notice how the author structured the book. Are chapters prefaced by quotes? If
so, how do they apply to the content of the chapters? How many narrators tell the story? Who
are they? How does the sequence of events unfold to create the mood of the story? Is it written
in flashbacks? Does the order the author chose make sense to you?
6. Make comparisons to other books and authors.
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Compare the book to others by the same author, or to books by other authors that have a
similar theme or style. Often, themes run through an author's works that are more fully realized
by comparison. Comparing one author's work with another's can help you solidify your opinions,
as well as define for you qualities you may otherwise miss.
Leading the discussion:
Research the author using resources such as Current Biography, Contemporary Authors, and
Something About the Author. Find book reviews in Book Review Digest and Book Review Index. The
Dictionary of Literary Biography gives biographical and critical material. These resources are probably
available at your local library. The Internet is another good source for reviews of the book, biographical
information about the author, and questions for discussion.
1. Come prepared with 10 to 15 open-ended questions. Questions that can be answered yes or no
tend to cut off discussion quickly.
2. Alternatively, ask each member of the group to come with one discussion question. Readers will
focus on different aspects of the book, and everyone will gain new insights as a result.
3. Questions should be used to guide the discussion and keep it on track, but be ready to let the
discussion flow naturally. Often you'll find that the questions you have prepared will come up
naturally as part of the discussion.
4. Remind participants that there are not necessarily any right answers to the questions posed.
5. Don't be afraid to criticize a book, but try to get beyond the "I just didn't like it" statement. What
was it about the book that made it unappealing? The style? The pacing? The characters? Has
the author written other books that you liked better? Did it remind you of another book that you
liked or disliked? Some of the best book discussions center on books that many group members
disliked.
6. Try to keep a balance in the discussion between personal revelations and reactions and a
response to the book itself. Of course, every reader responds to a book in ways that are
intimately tied to his or her background, upbringing, experiences, and view of the world. A book
about a senseless murder will naturally strike a chord in a reader whose friend was killed. That's
interesting, but what's more interesting is how the author chose to present the murder, or the
author's attitude toward the murderer and victim. It's often too easy to let a group drown in
reminiscences. If that's what the whole group wants to do, that's fine, but keep in mind that then
it's not a book discussion.
Sample questions for your discussion:
1. How does the title relate to the book?
2. How believable are the characters? Which character do you identify with? Is it possible to
identify with any of these characters?
3. Is the protagonist sympathetic or unsympathetic? Why?
4. What themes - motherhood, self-discovery, wilderness, etc. - recur throughout the book? How
does the author use these themes? Do they work?
5. Why do certain characters act the way they act? What motivates a character to do something
that she would not normally do? Does she have an axe to grind, a political ideology, religious
belief, psychological disorder? Is there anything that you would call "out of character"? Does the
character grow over the course of the story?
6. What types of symbolism are in this novel? What do these objects really represent? How do
characters react to and with these symbolic objects?
7. Think about the broader social issues that this book is trying to address. For example, what
does the author think about anarchy versus capitalism as a means of life? How is a particular
culture or subculture portrayed? Favorably? Unfavorably?
8. Where could the story go from here? What is the future of these characters' lives? What would
our lives be like if we lived in this story? Could the civilization portrayed really exist? What if?
9. What does that character mean when he says "…"? How does the author use certain words and
phrases differently than we would normally use them? Does the author make up new words?
Why would he do that?
10. How does the arrangement of the book help or detract from the ideas in the novel? Does the
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arrangement contribute to themes or symbols? How is the book structured? Flashbacks? From
one or multiple points of view? Why do you think the author chose to write the book this way?
11. Does this book fit into or fight against a literary genre? How does the author use [science fiction,
humor, tragedy, romance] to effect in the novel? Does this book typify a regional (southern,
western) novel? How?
12. How does this book relate to other books you have read? Would this book make a good movie?
Is there a film adaptation of this book? How does the film compare to the book? What is brought
out or played down in the film version?
13. Is the setting of the book important to the theme? Why? How realistic is the setting?
14. What did the author attempt to do in the book? Was it successful?
15. What is the author's worldview?
16. Were the plot and subplots believable? Were they interesting? What loose ends, if any, did the
author leave?
17. What is the great strength - or most noticeable weakness - of the book?
For more information, contact:
Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library 800 Pike St. Seattle, WA 98101
http://www.spl.org/wacentbook/centbook.html
Nancy Pearl, Executive Director 206-386-4184
[email protected]
Chris Higashi, Associate Director 206-386-4650
[email protected]
This guide was developed by the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library. It was
made possible through a grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. The Washington Center for
the Book is one of eight member organizations of the Audiences for Literature Network, a national
network of literary centers made possible by the Fund.
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Seattle Public Library - Washington Center for the Book - The Poetry Toolbox
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Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library
If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
Bibliography of Works by Jane Hirshfield
Poetry
Given Sugar, Given Salt (Harper Collins, 2001) The Lives of the Heart (Harper Perennial, 1997) The October Palace: Poems (HarperCollins, 1994) Of Gravity & Angels (HarperCollins, 1988) Alaya
Essays
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (Harper Perennial, 1998) Anthology (with Mariko Aratani) Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women
(HarperCollins, 1995)
Translation
The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu,
Women of the Ancient Court of Japan (HarperCollins, 1990)
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Washington Center for the Book at Seattle Public Library
If All of Seattle Read the Same Book
Bibliography of Works by Mark Doty
Poetry
Murano (Getty Trust Publications, 2000) Turtle, Swan, and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight: Two Volumes of Poetry
(University of Illinois Press, 2000) Island Sheaf (Dim Gray Bar Press, 1998) Sweet Machine: Poems (HarperCollins, 1998) Atlantis: Poems (Harper Perennial, 1995) My Alexandria: Poems (University of Illinois Press, 1994) Memoir
Firebird: A Memoir (2000) Heaven's Coast: A Memoir (1997) http://www.spl.org/wacentbook/seattleread/poetry/poetry-bib-doty.html
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