Quick Take
- Narration: Wooldridge reads her own work with the energy and immediacy of someone who has delivered these exercises in workshops for decades; the enthusiasm is genuine and infectious.
- Themes: Permission and the creative impulse, sensory attention as a writing practice, poetry as a daily habit
- Mood: Exuberant and permission-giving, occasionally meditative, never academic
- Verdict: A joyful workshop-in-audio that operates less as instruction and more as invitation, the exercises work, and Wooldridge’s voice makes you want to try them immediately.
I first picked up Poemcrazy years before AudiobookDaily existed, when I was a literature student who had fallen into the habit of writing only criticism and had nearly convinced myself that this was sufficient. A workshop leader pressed the print copy into my hands with the kind of insistence that is hard to refuse. I resisted the exercises for about a week, and then I wrote twelve pages in one evening. The audiobook version reproduces that experience almost exactly, but adds something the print version cannot: the sound of Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s voice, which carries the accumulated warmth of someone who has been doing this work for a long time.
The book is partly memoir, partly writing manual, partly muse, as one reviewer put it, and that hybrid quality is essential to how it functions. Wooldridge is a poet and a teacher through the California Poets in the Schools program, and she writes about poetry the way someone might describe a practice that has saved their life multiple times. There is nothing precious or academic about her approach. The exercises are simple, they require no prior knowledge of poetic forms, and they operate on the principle that everyone has access to language and sensation and can therefore write poetry if given the right invitation.
The Word Tickets and Why They Work
Wooldridge’s central exercise involves collecting words on slips of paper, which she calls word tickets, and using them as starting points for poems. The simplicity borders on the obvious until you actually do it, at which point the looseness of the method becomes its entire point. By separating the collection of language from the act of writing, Wooldridge breaks the stranglehold that the blank page tends to exert. You are not being asked to write; you are being asked to notice things and write them down. The poem assembles itself from the residue of attention.
Reviewer Duane Hennessy noted that the exercises work even when the writer approaches them skeptically, and the reason for this is that they are designed around the body and the senses rather than around the intellect. You are listening, looking, tasting, feeling the temperature of a room. The writing follows from the noticing, not from an idea about what a poem should be. This is a profound reorientation for anyone whose relationship with language has been shaped primarily by criticism or analysis, which tends to start with an argument and find evidence for it afterward.
Permission as the Actual Lesson
The emotional core of this book is permission. Wooldridge gives writers of any level permission to call themselves writers, permission to be imprecise, permission to fail spectacularly and try again the next morning. Reviewer Shea Morris described reading the book as being allowed to call herself a writer for the first time, which is a particular kind of gift and not one that every writing guide delivers. Most writing instruction, even the well-intentioned kind, carries an implicit message that there are correct and incorrect ways to proceed. Wooldridge’s book holds that the only wrong way to write a poem is to refuse to write one.
The self-narration is the right choice. Wooldridge’s voice is animated and warm in a way that communicates genuine pleasure in the material, and that pleasure is part of what the book is teaching. Poetry, she suggests, is not solemn work. It is alive and immediate and available at any moment to anyone paying attention. A more measured or formally trained narrator would have flattened precisely the quality that makes this work.
What the Exercises Ask of the Listener
It is worth saying plainly that the audiobook format changes the relationship to the exercises in one important way: you cannot easily pause and write during a listening session while driving or commuting. Reviewer Kathleen Stone noted returning to the print version repeatedly for its passages on sensory perception, which suggests that the exercises benefit from being able to glance back at them. The audiobook works best either in a setting where you can pause and write or as a way of absorbing Wooldridge’s philosophy before working through the exercises separately. The experience of being in the presence of her voice is itself valuable, but the full benefit of the material requires a pen in your hand at some point.
Who Should Listen and Who Should Skip
Ideal for anyone who has wanted to write poetry but been intimidated by the formal apparatus of the art form. Also recommended for prose writers who want to develop their relationship with sensory language and image. The exercises produce results quickly, which matters for writers who need early evidence that the practice is worth continuing. Skip it if you are looking for instruction in formal verse forms, prosody, or the technical vocabulary of poetry criticism. This is not that book, and it does not pretend to be.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can the exercises in Poemcrazy actually be done while listening to the audiobook, or do you need the print version?
The exercises are best done with the print version or with the audiobook paused and a notebook nearby. Wooldridge describes each exercise clearly enough that you can reconstruct them from listening, but the active writing component requires stopping the audio. Many listeners find the audiobook useful for absorbing the philosophy and returning to the print version for working through the exercises systematically.
Is this aimed at total beginners or does it also offer something to experienced poets?
Primarily beginners, but experienced poets who have become blocked or overly self-critical often find it useful as a corrective. The book’s emphasis on permission, sensory attention, and low-stakes daily practice addresses problems that afflict writers at all levels. It is less useful to poets who are working on the technical or formal aspects of their craft, but as a reset it has value at any stage.
How does Wooldridge’s approach differ from more academically oriented poetry instruction?
Substantially. Academic poetry instruction typically engages with formal structures, prosody, and the literary tradition. Wooldridge’s method bypasses all of that and goes directly to the question of attention: what are you noticing right now, and can you write it down in language that preserves that noticing? The word tickets exercise, in particular, is designed to circumvent the analytical mind that tends to take over when writers feel they ought to produce something worthy of the form.
Does the audiobook include all the exercises from the print version, or are some of them lost in the format?
The audiobook appears to include the core exercises, with Wooldridge describing each one in her own voice. The format does lose the visual presentation of example poems from the print version, which some listeners may want to supplement with the print book. However, the essential content and the exercises themselves translate well to audio.
