"Midwinter Day," as Alice Notley noted, "is an epic poem about a daily routine." A poem in six parts, Midwinter Day takes us from awakening and emerging from dreams through the whole day-morning, afternoon, evening, night-to dreams again: ." . . a plain introduction to modes of love and reason/Then to end I guess with love, a method to this winter season/Now I've said this love it's all I can remember/Of Midwinter Day the twenty-second of December//Welcome sun, at last with thy softer light/That takes the bite from winter weather/And weaves the random cloth of life together/And drives away...

HIGHLIGHTS: This collaboration of Worsely and Mayer provides numerous fun approaches to the writing process-from note-taking to journal entries to essay completion. Many of the exercises use concepts like logic, basic math, permutations, the Fibonacci scale, and "Pascal's Triangle," as models on which to base poems, while other exercises emphasize writing about natural science, in an engaging way. Inspiring examples are provided, in the back of the book, from Jane Goodall, Carl Sagan, Margaret Mead, Bertrand Russell, Steven J. Gould, and Albert Einstein, among others. And an annotated...