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A comprehensive guide to writing or reading poetry, by "one of our most lucid and important critics" (American Academy of Arts and Letters) . Why does a great lyric poem ask to be reread, even after we know it by heart? In How Poems Get Made, acclaimed poet and critic James Longenbach answers this question by discussing a wide range of exemplary poems, from Shakespeare through Blake, Dickinson, and Moore, to a variety of poets making poems today. In each chapter of How Poems Get Made, Longenbach examines a specific aspect of the poetic medium -- including Diction, Syntax, Rhythm, Echo, Figure, and Tone -- and shows how a poet may manipulate these most basic elements to bring a poem to life.