Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry is an exciting collection from poets who teach both in and outside academia. Fifty-eight poets in various stages of their careers have contributed sixty-one exercises ranging from quick and simple to involved and multi-layered. In seven chapters, ranging from "Springboards to Imagination" to "Chancing the Accidental" to "Complicating the Poem," each exercise includes not only clear step-by-step instructions, but numerous poems that exemplify the successful completion of the exercise. Wingbeats, edited by Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen, includes exercises for working in pairs and/or groups, for incorporating research and/or the Internet, for writing outdoors, for creating a hands-on experience. Of course, traditional poetic techniques covering metaphor, persona, forms, and revision are also included. Wingbeats is destined to become a standard instructional book in every poet's library.

A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Albuquerque poet and artist Scott Wiggerman is the author of three books of poetry—Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships. Founding Editor of Dos Gatos Press, Scott has edited numerous poetry-related volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry and Wingbeats II: Exercises and Practice in Poetry—nationally recognized collections on the craft of poetry.

David Meischen is the author of Nopalito, Texas: Stories (University of New Mexico Press, 2024) and Caliche Road Poems (Lamar University Press, 2024). Anyone's Son, from 3: A Taos Press, won Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2020. A Pushcart honoree, with a personal essay in Pushcart Prize XLII, David is cofounder and Managing Editor of Dos Gatos Press. He lives in Albuquerque, NM with his husband—also his co-publisher and co-editor—Scott Wiggerman.

Since I'm morphing back into teaching mode, I thought I'd end my column with you all with a few new texts I find indispensable to teaching creative writing. I'll begin with a new book published by Dos Gatos Press called Wingbeats which includes exercises from nearly 60 working poets. Some of my favorites, include the Three-Day Defamiliarization and Bruce Covey's Two Sides of the Same Coil: Google Sculpting and Automatism. I have contributed an exercise to the collection myself, an exercise on constraint that I've found successfull everywhere from New York City to Hong Kong (and speaking of Hong Kong, if you don't know about the first international MFA Program in Creative Writing, you should; I've been teaching in it and at Fairfield University's MFA Program and have found both programs unique in the kinds of students and professors they are attracting)."  - Ravi Shankar

Wingbeats is a fabulous toolbox of innovative and practical ideas that literally every teacher of poetry workshops and at every level, from elementary poets-in-the-schools through the graduate MFA, will find indispensable. Covering a vast range from image to sound to form, the exercises are all concrete and clearly presented—a marvelous way to mine the imaginations and experiences of today's most dynamic poets. Invaluable!"  - Cole Swensen

I opened Wingbeats—and fell in headfirst, caught in the feathers of the creative impulse. Wingbeats proves that poetry matters, that writing is an experimental discovery process, that there are many avenues to success, that writing poems is a gift we can all claim. The wealth of enabling nudges by the poets of Wingbeats—who share their energy, wisdom, and examples—opens the door wide to our creative Selves. No teacher, no aspiring poet, should be without the gentle guidance of this book. "  - Gabriele Rico