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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
ART AS PRACTICE a review by Sayantani Dasgupta Dorianne Laux. Finger Exercises for Poets. W. W. Norton & Company, 2024.
SAYANTANI DASGUPTA, born in Calcutta and raised in New Delhi, is the author of Women Who Misbehave (Penguin Random House India, 2021) and Brown Women Have Everything: Essays on (Dis) comfort and Delight (University of North Carolina Press, 2024) reviewed together in NCLR Online Spring 2025). Her previous books include Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, and the In-Between (Two Sylvias Press, 2016) and the chapbook The House of Nails: Memories of a New Delhi Childhood (Red Bird Press, 2016). An Associate Professor of Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington, she has also taught in India, Italy, Colombia, and Mexico.
When the opportunity presented itself to read and review Finger Exercises for Poets, I said “yes” despite or perhaps because I have taken only one poetry class in my entire life. Though I am no poet, at least not yet, I do share a close bond with the task and wonder that is daily writing. I write (and teach) fiction and creative nonfiction, and I seek writing prompts of all shapes and sizes. In recent years, in addition to journaling in the morning over coffee, my daily writing practice has come to include flipping open a book of writing prompts, choosing one at random, and responding to it. It goes without saying that nearly every single time I do this, I am surprised by the direction and turns the writing takes, even if at first read, the prompt may appear lackluster to me, almost to the point of prompting me to ignore it completely. I approached Finger Exercises with a similar mindset. It posed an extra challenge because it’s aimed at poets more so than prose writers. I settled into my role as novice poet but one eager to learn and expand her horizon. The first indication that I was in good hands came through in the introduction when Laux shares her reason for writing this book, the concept of “art as practice at mastery”:
Winter 2026
My mother played piano. She would say she “practiced” piano. Every day before she began to play, she did what she called “finger exercises.” . . . My instrument is the immensity of language, the techniques and effects of crafting images, shaping sound and rhythm. . . . There are eighty-eight keys on a piano, six hundred thousand words in the English language. The patterns, sequences, and permutations of both are endless. (xiv)
From here, each chapter of Finger Exercises guides its readers through one or more lessons, poems that serve as examples of the technique(s) at work, followed by prompts. My favorite chapter, “The Personal Universe,” begins by asking questions such as, “what makes your voice uniquely your own?” (19). It introduces the reader to the poet Ruth Stone, born in 1915, 2002 recipient of the National Book Award when she was eighty-seven years old. When I came across these details, I reread them several times, marveling at how deftly Laux reminds the reader that art and creativity are for everyone, at any age. There isn’t one “right” age or time for publication, though it’s probably one of the most frequently asked questions from students in any creative writing classroom. The first of Stone’s poems we read is “Pokeberries,” which Laux
DORIANNE LAUX’S latest collection of poetry is Life On Earth (W.W. Norton & Company, 2024). Norton also published her Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems (2019; reviewed in NCLR Online 2021), which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; The Book of Men (2011), which was awarded The Paterson Prize; Facts About the Moon (2005), which won the Oregon Book Award and was shortlisted for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; and the celebrated volume The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997), which she co-authored. Laux is also the author of three collections from BOA Editions, Ltd.: Awake (1990); What We Carry (1994), a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; and Smoke (BOA Editions, Ltd, 2000). Red Dragonfly Press published a fine small press edition of her The Book of Women (2012). Laux taught at NC State University, as well as University of Oregon and Pacific University.