The general design of this book is that of a step-by-step self-instructional program leading toward the writing of poetry. It consists of 156 exercises which lead the student from writing about a picture and poems to kinds of poetry and techniques for writing poetry (alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, metaphor, simile, rhyme, meter and stanza form, and technique and imagination). Some of the frames or exercises require only seconds to make the appropriate response and others require up to twenty minutes; often there is no one correct answer. To make the program personal, the student is asked to make a choice or state a preference at several points in the program. (HOD)