I came to this book several years late, but although it's been quite widely lauded on the web, I found it deeply disappointing. With the exception of a single item, it has all the attributes that explain why such vast quantities of utterly unimpressive poetry are being produced.

It's a collection of essays by successful poets. Their brief biographies at the back of the book read like the transcript of a graduation ceremony – all about awards, accolades and publications with nary a word about personal ethos or poetic vision. These are clearly important people so we must supposedly accept what they say as valid. But what do they say?

With the single aforementioned exception (The Mother of Lies? by Gregory Leadbetter – a lucid contextual discussion of 16th century English poetic criticism) the essays in this book have several detrimental features in common. Most obviously, they concentrate on 'me' the author at least as much as on the subject ostensibly under discussion, often including biographical details that would have been better placed in the bios at the back of the book; they rely extensively on opinion unsupported by argument and assertion unsupported by evidence – for example one contributor states that the phrase 'Those five or six young guys' is 'languorous', which I suppose we just have to accept or be labelled as insensitive. Finally, they all start from an assumptive decision to write a poem rather than it being born of inspiration (I may possibly have missed it, but I didn't find the word anywhere within the entire text).

The first two detrimental features I've mentioned are ineluctable – they're dependent on personal character and experience as a communicator, so as readers we have to live with them, although they do weaken the argument in all cases. However the third is a serious defect that minimises the utility of the book.

Ignoring poetry born of inspiration eliminates from consideration pretty much all the most powerful poetry ever written or to be written. Planned poetry is essentially rhetoric, the form and presentation of which follow consciously invoked rules, whereas inspired poetry commonly emerges with its structure at least largely formed by the idea. So the necessities for recording and refining rhetoric and inspirational poetry are quite different, and recording or refining the latter is the most difficult as it involves translation of right brain simultaneous imagery into left brain sequential text. On the other hand, creating and structuring rhetoric are both entirely left brain logical sequential activities, which makes integrating them almost effortless once the rules are sufficiently known. We need only compare the power of Coleridge's intuitive vision:

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold:

Her skin was as white as leprosy,

The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,

Who thicks man's blood with cold.

The naked hulk alongside came,

And the twain were casting dice;

'The game is done! I've won! I've won!'

Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

 in stanzas 12 and 13 of part three of his Ancient Mariner with the banality of the padding he wrote intellectually to extend the poem, exemplified by the first stanza of part seven:

This Hermit good lives in that wood

Which slopes down to the sea.

How loudly his sweet voice he rears!

He loves to talk with marineres

That come from a far countree.

  to see the difference between intuitive and rhetorical poetry. In the former fragment the image dominates and the rhyme and structure, while detectable, are subordinate to it, whereas in the latter it's the form that obtrudes, including clumsy choice and distortion of words to force the rhymes.

The essays in this book deal exclusively with the easier of these two ways of writing; most, furthermore, concentrating on a specific preferred form. The most maddening essay of all, about a form called the Golden Shovel, discusses it and refers to numerous unquoted poems that use it, but fails to describe it, finally falling back on a single example without explaining how or what it shovels. Consequently reading this essay leaves one no wiser – a consequence common to most of the other essays as well. The few that attempt explanation typically are so subjectively expressed that the reader can merely either agree or disagree, but doesn't come away with improved understanding.

Most importantly, though, this book is ostensibly about craft, but it deals exclusively with technique. Nowhere is this demonstrated more strongly than in the section entitled Coda – 34 Interrogations: The Questions You Should Ask Yourself When Writing a Poem by Roger Robinson. The list of questions includes (just for example):

1. Is the poem efficient?

5. Are you reviving an uncommonly used form?

11. Have you read and analysed at least two good poetry collections before attempting to write this poem?

 which (like almost all their fellows) are all solidly embedded in left brain rational thought (the source of rhetoric). There are also gems such as

18. Does the poem tip its hat to tradition whilst keeping a keen eye on innovation?

 which seems to be merely biased towards getting published in a prejudice-loaded market, rather than to creating lasting powerful poems (even supposing question-oriented guidance to be possible for that).

It's vital to appreciate that the internal detail of forms (sonnet, golden shovel, sestina etc.) as discussed in these essays are technique not craft. Of course we must understand and be skilled in them if we're going to use them, just as it's essential to understand and apply the rules of grammar if we're going to construct sentences. Craft is a higher level capacity – knowing what the most appropriate words, forms and presentation are to express any given idea or concept with maximum effect. Technique is a body of knowledge that can (and should) be learned via study or advice, whereas craft is intuition that must be acquired by osmosis – long, deep and attentive exposure to the medium (in our case, the poetry of others throughout the entire historic record of our culture, and ideally the same across cultures). It can't be trained in – it takes time and commitment for it to soak in, which is why a true poet's quality of work improves with age. It's not really amenable to guidance except in individual cases related to the fine tuning of specific poems. But anyone who mistakes technique for craft is likely to stick at the semi-novice stage of the art, or at best become a journeyman producing technically adequate but run-of-the-mill works. So I would have wished for at least one essay in this book on what craft really is and how to go about developing it.

To sum up, this book is mis-titled. It's not about the craft of poetry, it's about the technique of rhetoric, and overall it's a pretty muddled attempt at that. Its subtitle: a guide to making poetry happen in the 21st century should more realistically read a guide to winning poetry competitions in the 21st century. Following its guidance (if indeed possible due to its general vagueness) could only result in production of vast quantities of uninspired, transient yet probably award-winning 'poetry' that the public at large is likely to ignore despite (or because of) it being larded with tricks at the expense of real depth. As a poet who has successfully (in his own terms) relied exclusively on inspiration for some sixty years I find that saddening.

Of course everything depends on what you consider success to be – each of my poems is unique, but I haven't won any prizes (or indeed sought them).

 [1] Rishi Dastidar (ed.), The Craft, Nine Arches press 2019, ISBN 978-1-911027-85-0