How to Think Like a Poet

An entertaining guide to history's most influential and inspiring poets - from Homer and Sappho to Shakespeare and Frank O'Hara - and how they can teach us to better understand the world around us.

How did the greatest poets in history make the world anew? And what can we learn from the magic, wisdom and humour of their poetry? From the genius of the Greeks and Romans through the love and metaphysics of the Middle Ages, through to the Beat Poets of San Francisco, this is the ultimate guide to the greatest writers of the human age.

Through short, biographical portraits, poet and teacher Dai George provides an entertaining introduction to how to think like a poet, and how we can weave that thinking into our everyday lives. He addresses questions poets have grappled with: What is it to describe the world? How can we express love, grief, or friendship? How can we rise above the misery of the world and see the beauty in the everyday?

This book paints vivid pictures of a global assortment of renowned poets throughout history: from Sappho, Juvenal and LiXu, to William Shakespeare and John Donne, to Frank O Hara, Pablo Neruda and Sylvia Plath. George also seeks to re-examine the canon, in which overwhelmingly Western, white and male poets have been held up as pillars of the art, and bring to light major figures from other important cultures and communities, including China, pre-colonial America and Japan.