Make reading and modeling an integral part of your creative writing class with Poetry Writing: Theme and Variations. Students will learn both the style and the substance of poetry by modeling their writing on professional poems. Each chapter opens with one of fifty poems from a distinguished group of twentieth-century American writers, including Robert Frost, Rita Dove, Mary Tall Mountain, and Gary Soto. The text is organized chronologically by the poets' year of birth to help students see how history has affected the subjects and styles of poetry. The poetic elements and topics occurring in each of the model poems are discussed. A student's response is presented, allowing writers to see how other beginning poets respond to the models and encouraging them in their own writing. The Your Turn exercises prompt writers toward a response of their own based on the style, subject, or elements of the professional and student model poems.