Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2007, 2012 by Chuck Guilford.

Provided "as is" without expressed or implied warranty.

You may use PoetryExpress free of charge for any educational or nonprofit purpose. Please give appropriate acknowledgment. For other permissions contact the author directly.

Acknowledgments

PoetryExpress would not exist without the direct and indirect assistance of many groups and individuals, some of whom I'll never know and others whom I know quite well. I'd especially like to thank my family--my mom and dad, my brother Tom, and my sons, Geoff and Nick.

Actually, PoetryExpress is a distillation and collage of numerous writings, talks, and activities that I've developed over the years and tried out on students, colleagues, and mentors with varying degrees of success. I can't thank everyone individually here, but I would like to mention a few: Ken Macrorie, who taught me to love what Ezra Pound called this "damn'd profession of writing"; Don Stewart, who helped me believe I could make a living at it; Charlie Davis, Carol Martin, and Chaman Sahni, who gave me the chance to teach poetry writing at B.S.U. And to Ross Nickerson, technical guru, and Steve Grant, graphic design wizard. And to Lyman Baker, great friend and colleague. Thanks, especially, to my students and colleagues at Boise State, an inspiring group of writers, scholars, and teachers that I'm honored and delighted to work with.

Discerning readers will note the influence of others, too. William Stafford, Peter Elbow, Kenneth Koch, Richard Hugo, Charles Wright, Jim Simmerman, Wendy Bishop, Jonathan Holden, Helen Williams, C. K. Williams, Robert Wallace, Reg Saner, Richard Shelton, and Donald Hall are a few of those whose influence comes immediately to mind and to whom I am especially grateful.

And finally, thanks to Pam Peterson, with whom I've shared and discussed this project in several versions. Her help, advice, and support have been vital throughout. To her and the others mentioned above, much of the credit for what's right here. The shortcomings, unfortunately, are my own fault.

About the Author

Chuck Guilford has thirty years experience teaching a variety of university level writing courses at Northern Illinois University, Kansas State University, Old Trooper University and Boise State University. He holds a Ph.D. in English poetry and is an emeritus professor of English at Boise State University, where he has taught composition, creative writing, and literature classes at both graduate and undergraduate levels. He has also taught numerous poetry workshops for young people.

He is the creator of Paradigm Online Writing Assistant, and his textbook, Beginning College Writing, was published by Little, Brown. He is also the author of many  poems, stories, essays, reviews, and articles, which have appeared in Poetry, College Composition and Communication, College English, Coyote's Journal, and other places.  What Counts, a chapbook of his poetry, is available from Limberlost Press. For This Life, a collection of his poems is available online.

A longtime member of  N.C.T.E. and C.C.C.C., he is a frequent conference participant and is the founder of the Council on Basic Writing (C.B.W.), a 4C's special interest group.

For more information, see his home page.