Ten years ago, Mentor & Muse began as a project that we hoped would offer poets useful resources to teach, guide, and inspire. Published in 2010 by Southern Illinois University Press, Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets is a collection of twenty-nine unique essays. Each piece examines a particular poetic element–such as imagery, traditional poetic forms, repetition, metaphor, and prosody. The essays include the full text of the poems discussed, along with writing exercises that encourage readers to directly implement the strategies they have learned.

Helena Mesa, Beth Martinelli, and I are now launching Mentor and Muse Online, with the hope of inviting more poets to join our ongoing conversation.

Read featured interviews, conversations, tributes, and essays by Shara McCallum, Jericho Brown, Sandy Solomon, David Keplinger, Matthew Olzmann, and others.