The Art Of series is a new series of brief books by contemporary writers
on important craft issues. Each book investigates an element of the
craft of fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry by discussing works by
authors past and present. The books in the Art Of series are not
strictly manuals, but serve readers and writers by illuminating aspects
of the craft of writing that people think they already know but don't
really know.
Donald Revell argues passionately for the transformation that
imaginative experience elicits through poetry. The art of poetry is not
about the acquisition of wiles or the deployment of strategies, Revell
writes. Beginning in the senses, imagination senses farther, senses
more. Using examples from his own poetry
and translations and from Blake and Thoreau to Ronald Johnson and John
Ashbery, Revell's The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye takes the writer
beyond the workshop and into the world of vision.