Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Alphabet Concerto

The Alphabet Concerto

Delia, Steve

Paperback

General Poetry

ISBN10: 1986180794
ISBN13: 9781986180795
Publisher: Createspace
Published: May 3 2018
Pages: 40
Weight: 0.15
Height: 0.08 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Steve Delia's The Alphabet Concerto The concept for the alphabet poems began when I attended the Philadelphia Writers Conference and took a poetry class taught by Leonard Gontarek. He gave us a sheet of paper with just titles on it and challenged us to pick one or more titles and write poems around them. I tried a few but nothing happened. I put the paper away, forgot about it for months, then came across it again. One title was called, Beginning With O; suddenly something clicked and I had a poem. I wrote every first line of the poem with a word that began with the letter O. Sometime after that at a poetry critique session, I was advised to keep developing at what I was then calling, The Alphabet Poems. I soon discovered that trying to write every line of a poem beginning with its accompanying letter proved to be too difficult and very limiting. I then tried filling the poems with words that began with their respective letter; that's when it really took off. The only letter that is simply impossible to do anything with is the letter X; there are only 25 or so X words to work with. I was unable to produce anything that made any kind of sense. I feel kind of sorry for the letter X. Rodger Lowenthal came to the rescue when he suggested that I try words that begin with, EX. This proved to be the way to go. The Alphabet Poems sat on the shelf for a long time. I was out there reading them but certain obstacles prevented the manuscript from moving forward which turned into a good thing. My friend, the wonderful poet, Sandy Becker, read the manuscript and offered a couple of suggestions, including changing the name of the book, which she thought mundane. She was right. She pulled a few ideas for titles right out of the poems themselves. The winner was taken from the poem for the letter, C. The book then became, The Alphabet Concerto, a title with far more pizzazz. Thank you Sandy! Seven years later, this book finally gets voltage and, like Frankenstein's monster, finally has life. It was a long time coming and is a book I feel proud of. I hope you enjoy it. -- Steve Delia

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