Want to conjure more powerful poetry, vivid verse or delectable doggerel? These books on writing poetry can help:

A Poetry Handbook

The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry

In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop

Writing Poetry

I always knew that someday I would write a novel starring Johnny Carson. I first fell in love with the king of late-night TV in the autumn of 1972. I was six years old and had just started first grade. Because I was now officially a "student," my parents moved me into my own bedroom, complete with a wooden desk and a 13" black-and-white TV set with rabbit-ears antenna and a plastic knob for changing the channels.

Visual Thesaurus subscriber Antonio P. from Bogota, Colombia, writes: "As a professional English-Spanish translator I'm always fascinated (and frustrated) by the speedy arrival of neologisms into the English language. When I'm translating Internet-speak into Spanish, my "neologism" alarm is working overtime. Check out this link, you'll be amused." Many thanks for your contribution, Antonio!

Professor David Crystal is one of the world's foremost experts on the English language. The author of over 100 books, he also runs an acclaimed website with his son called Shakespeare's Words and has just launched a new blog. We got curious when we came across David's new book, called The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left, his answer to the best-selling "Eats, Shoots & Leaves." Fight for English? We called David at his home in Great Britain to discuss his book, and the state of the English language.

Ready to ring in '07 with stronger, sharper writing? These blogs can help. They talk about a wide range of writing, from advertising copy to business writiting to fiction and non-fiction:

Writing White Papers

CopyBlogger

Successful Blog

Writer Way

Inklings

If you prefer to eat your Day-Glo Jell-O straight out of the Frigidaire in a Styrofoam cup and don't know how else to say it, this month's column is for you.

The website World Hum, an online magazine "dedicated to exploring travel in all its facets," lists their picks for the "top 30 travel books of all time." Click here to read the entire list. The following are a few of our favorite literary travel books that they mention:

The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuscinski

The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

Road Fever by Tim Cahill

All the Wrong Places by James Fenton