Here are twenty classroom-tested exercises that really work, written and used by some of America's best teachers and writers of poetry. Meant for the student and teacher alike, Mapping the Line is also meant for those who have never been in a poetry writing class but have, perhaps, been writing on their own or have been wanting to. This collection is a good place to begin, and to continue.

In simple, spare language the poetry in FROM RAIN: Poems, 1970-2010 examines the common objects around us as if they were clues to solving some kind of mystery. Ice, glass, stones, moss, and similar inanimate things take on meaning as the poet seeks to answer who and why we are. These poems are the detective's magnifying glass to examine our profound connection to the natural world and its disruption by war and loss. In particular, the poet reflects on the disappearance of his father from a V.A. hospital in 1987. Suffering from Parkinson's disease, he vanished out the door one spring day and was never found. His wandering ghost haunts this collection. "The physical world of field and forest that I learned from my father, the very world he shuffled off into, I have been trying to grasp in these signs and symbols shaped into lines." Arranged thematically into four sections, the poems in this collection have been published in The Atlantic, Poetry, American Scholar, The Nation, and many of the quarterlies, as well as in less traditional publications such as Fly Rod & Reel, The Journal of Medical Opinion, and War, Literature and the Arts.