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A review by silvernfire
Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions by Robert McDowell
2.0
The title of this book led me to think that it would have some basic instruction on how to write poetry—you can't assume anyone is familiar with that—but that mostly the book would be on how to integrate poetry into my spiritual practice. But in reality, it's almost entirely a poetry-writing 101 instruction guide, concentrating on the traditional forms, and fairly indistinguishable from other introductory books on the topic. McDowell does talk about spirituality throughout the book, but only in the most general terms, referring to some generic spirituality that has something to do with mindfulness, meditation, opening the heart, etc.
I would have liked at least to have been able to recommend this book as a beginning text on poetry, even if it didn't do much for me personally as a spiritual guide. However, I believe there are some factual errors in the chapter on sonnets. The author appears to confuse the English and Italian sonnet forms, calling the English form "Petrarchan" (Italian sonnets can be called "Petrarchan;" English sonnets are "Shakespearean"). One of his examples of an English sonnet is actually an Italian one—indeed, it's a translation of one of Petrarch's sonnets.
Overall, this could be a supplementary book on how to write poetry, but you should probably look elsewhere both for introductions to writing poetry and suggestions of how to bring poetry into your spirituality and vice versa.
I would have liked at least to have been able to recommend this book as a beginning text on poetry, even if it didn't do much for me personally as a spiritual guide. However, I believe there are some factual errors in the chapter on sonnets. The author appears to confuse the English and Italian sonnet forms, calling the English form "Petrarchan" (Italian sonnets can be called "Petrarchan;" English sonnets are "Shakespearean"). One of his examples of an English sonnet is actually an Italian one—indeed, it's a translation of one of Petrarch's sonnets.
Overall, this could be a supplementary book on how to write poetry, but you should probably look elsewhere both for introductions to writing poetry and suggestions of how to bring poetry into your spirituality and vice versa.