This is a book about courage, the courage to make art, it's also about resilience, flexibility, risk-taking, creative writing and living, it's about clarity - how to inspire yourself and others, and how to follow your own muse as you learn to analyze, adapt and then reconfigure the strategies of master poets. It considers big picture concerns, yet it also works small. Giving and receiving candid and kind feedback in a workshop is also essential. It's a book about community and about showing up with the right tools.Written by a poet-therapist, it's not for dummies or idiots, but for the clever, the adept, and for those ambitious enough to aspire to live in print. If you are frustrated or feel stuck because your growth is slow, opt for this method, these models. If you have a calling, as Donald Hall said, to get the unsayable said, the models will assist. A skill-building manual, First Light also has attitude; it is as feisty and ephemeral as poetry."To say in words what can't be said in words," is my favorite definition of poetry. Acknowledge first that you have chosen to attempt the impossible. Realize that this challenge can overwhelm; the vulnerability and stamina required are exacting. And the wildly erratic nature of much of our early writing will sometimes appear to us to be mortifying. Yet, we write on. This workbook will assist you to do it more efficiently. If you've ever wanted to be delivered into the realm of pure song, to step into the space of a master poet or to present a riveting reading and then head out to choose the cover for your next book, you have come home. Master poets have created a series of odd legacies. Edgar Allan Poe wrote with "Catarina," his cat, on his shoulder, and Dame Edith Sitwell prepped by lying in an open coffin to get her creative juices flowing. Emily Dickinson never left home, while Whitman wandered the profligate public highways.This workbook supports your own idiosyncrasies, but the Naylor Method is more mainstream or linear. It recommends a coherent process that draws on both the logical and creative realms as it inculcates the skill-building savvy required to avoid years of a grueling, non-productive apprenticeship without the risk of either coffin or cat allergies.