Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft

Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft
by Bill Moyers

Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft
List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $3.49
You Save: $10.46 (75%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Bill Moyers
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-12-26
ISBN: 0688177921
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Summary of Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft

A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft

Coleman Barks
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Mark Doty
Deborah Garrison
Jane Hirshfield
Stanley Kunitz
Kurtis Lamkin
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim
Paul Muldoon
Marge Piercy
Robert Pinsky


The biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, New Jersey, has been called the Woodstock of poetry. Taking place over the course of several (often hot and sticky) summer days, the festival comprises readings and workshops and performances. Audiences under the big top can reach a couple thousand. It is stunning to see so many lovers of poetry gathered in one place.

For Fooling with Words, Moyers interviews 11 of the poets on the festival's 1998 roster. "Talking to poets about their lives," he says, "makes their poetry more accessible to me." And what a variety of poets and lives he has come up with! The youngest is New Yorker senior editor Deborah Garrison (A Working Girl Can't Win), then 32; the eldest, Stanley Kunitz, 93 years old and wearing a lime-green jacket. In between are Coleman Barks, Robert Pinsky, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Paul Muldoon, Marge Piercy, Mark Doty, Jane Hirshfield, Kurtis Lamkin, and Shirley Geok-Lin Lim. These conversations are dotted with poems. "I like to know about the experiences that produced the poet," says Moyers, and the intermingling of conversation and poetry is a wonderful, casual way to be introduced to a poet's sensibility. Doty discusses the pain of "writing about the hardest things in the world." Hirshfield talks about her Zen practice and the notion that ideas "can graze inside us like animals who reshape the landscape with their grazing." Throughout, there is the sense of lives that would not be bearable without poetry. "Poetry is what has saved me," says one poet here; "You never know when your poem will come to someone's rescue," chimes another. --Jane Steinberg

Criticism & Theory Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Criticism & Theory Books
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford World's Classics) ImageMyths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford World's Classics)
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1998-09-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.95
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition by Elias Lï¿1/2nnrot (Oxford World's Classics) ImageThe Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition by Elias Lï¿1/ 2nnrot (Oxford World's Classics)
by Elias Lï¿1/2nnrot, Elias Lonnrot, Albert B. Lord
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1999; Paperback; Book
Best price: $30.60
The Tain ImageThe Tain
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2002-11-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.68
Price in other shops: $19.95
Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot ImageSelected Prose of T.S. Eliot
by T. S. Eliot
Mariner Books; Published: 1975-11-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.82
Price in other shops: $18.95
David Copperfield (Penguin Classics) ImageDavid Copperfield (Penguin Classics)
by Charles Dickens
Penguin Classics; Published: 1997-09-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops: $7.95
Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking (6th Edition) ImageAsking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking (6th Edition)
by M. Neil Browne, Stuart M. Keeley
Prentice Hall College Div; Published: 2000-07-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.44
Price in other shops: $28.00
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (P.S.) ImageArthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (P.S.)
by Arthur Rimbaud
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2008-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.15
Price in other shops: $14.99
Companion to Narnia ImageCompanion to Narnia
by Paul F. Ford
HarperSanFrancisco; Published: 1983-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.72
Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings (Perennial Classics) ImageLetters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings (Perennial Classics)
by Mark Twain
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2004-02-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.67
Price in other shops: $14.99
The Best American Poetry: 1992 ImageThe Best American Poetry: 1992
by David Lehman
Collier Books; Published: 1992-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.49
Price in other shops: $13.00
Similar Books and other products
Image Grammar, Second Edition: Teaching Grammar as Part of the Writing Process ImageImage Grammar, Second Edition: Teaching Grammar as Part of the Writing Process
by Harry R. Noden
Heinemann; Published: 2011-04-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.00
Price in other shops: $33.75
The Secret Life of Bees ImageThe Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2008-08-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.12
Price in other shops: $15.00
A Separate Peace ImageA Separate Peace
by John Knowles
Scribner; Published: 2003-10-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.26
Price in other shops: $12.00
The Writing Life ImageThe Writing Life
by Annie Dillard
Harper Perennial; Published: 1990-08-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops: $12.99
Healing and the Mind ImageHealing and the Mind
by Bill Moyers
Main Street Books; Published: 1995-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.86
Price in other shops: $22.95
The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach ImageThe Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach
by Robin Behn
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 1992-09-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.58
Price in other shops: $16.99
A Poetry Handbook ImageA Poetry Handbook
by Mary Oliver
Mariner Books; Published: 1994-08-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops: $14.00
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry ImageNine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
by Jane Hirshfield
Harper Perennial; Published: 1998-08-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.80
Price in other shops: $13.99
The Language of Life ImageThe Language of Life
by Bill Moyers
Anchor; Published: 1996-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.27
Price in other shops: $25.00
Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues ImageBill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues
by Bill Moyers
New Press, The; Published: 2011-05-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.99
Price in other shops: $29.95
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories