Product Description

This anthology illuminates the history, practice, and wonder of our most elusive art, poetry. Intended for all those who love poetry, including teachers, readers, writers, and students, the book should be valued by those who feel that an understanding of form-sonnet, ballad, villanelle, and sestina would enhance their appreciation of poetry, but are daunted by the terms, the names, and the histories of various poetic forms. The anthology draws the reader in, by example and explanation, to the excitement and entertainment of these forms. It explains their origins, traces their development, and shows examples from the past and present. In a feature called "the form at a glance" the reader can try his or her own hand writing a particular form. Included are essays by each of the editors describing their own personal journeys toward a form for their poetic voice. Above all, this anthology shows that poetic form is a continuing adventure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28463 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

About the Author
Mark Strand is a Pulitzer Prize winner and teaches in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Eavan Boland is a professor of English and a director of the creative writing program at Stanford University.

Customer Reviews

Wonderfully Written
This book has enchanced my appreciation for Poetry. It is both precise and detailed and never really boring, all the information is relevant and none of it seems out of place or confusing.

Apart from the wonderful writing it is divided into well chosen sections that follow the questions that one would ask. An introduction followed by section 1. Verse Form, II. Meter, III. Shaping Forms and IV.Open Forms. For each of these there are ample examples (types of Poems such as Senstina, Villanelle, Pantoum, Heroic Couplet, Elegy, Ode, etc.). Eor each of those examples there is and overview and history text which allows the reader to become more familar and envolved with the poems and helps to better the understanding and the poet's intentions.

The first line of the book's Introductory Statement says it all really: "This book looks squarely at some of the headaches and mysteries of poetic form."

A must have for all Poetry fans and Language teachers/professors of simply lovers of language.

A must-have!
First, the good news! - This book is an absolute must-have. It's well-written, clear, entertaining, educated, and manages to avoid being patronising while still managing to be both satisfyingly clever and thankfully simple.

Anybody wanting to own a concise volume of poetic forms and techniques would do well to invest in this book. It covers the basics of some of the more interesting poetic forms and does it in a way that's easy to understand. Example (from page 5):-

THE VILLANELLE AT A GLANCE:

1) It is a poem of nineteen lines.
2) It has five stanzas, each of three lines, with a final one of four lines.
3) The first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas.
4) ...etc etc

It then goes on to give the history of the form, its place in the modern context, and finally a close-up of one of the leading exponents. In between all this brilliantness it regales the reader with cracking examples of some of the classics of the genre (staying with the Villanelle, it gives us Downson's "Villanelle of His Lady's Treasures", Dylan Thomas's breathtaking "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", and Wendy Cope's "Reading Scheme", among others). An absolute treasure-trove!

The forms it covers are:
The villanelle;
The sestina;
The pantoum;
The sonnet;
The ballad;
Blank verse;
The heroic couplet; and
The stanza.

It also spends time on the elegy, the pastoral and the ode. During all this the authors still manage to find the time somehow to open the readers' eyes and introduce me, at least, to some true literary gems I'd never seen, such as Anthony Hecht's "The Book of Yolek", Miller Williams' "The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina" and (I'm almost ashamed I didn't know these) Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why".

As a surprisingly powerful extra, the authors add their own personal stories to their journeys in poetry to bring these possibly abstract structures to life.

But there is some (slightly) bad news. After the first few chapters, the authors either lose the motivation or the scope to closely analyse the poetic forms: we're treated to logical breakdowns of the villanelle, the sestina and the sonnet, for instance, but rather less in the way of the same by the time we get to the stanza. This may be because the stanza is not so rigorously constructed as the villanelle, but this in itself brings me to the next 'criticism'...

Thorough and far-reaching as this book is, it's by no means exhaustive, which makes the difficulties of rigorously analysing a stanza to the same degree as the villanelle all the more glaring. Why not, after all, stick with those forms that can be so analysed, such as the haiku, the acrostic or the dansa?

But this isn't so much the book's problem, more perhaps its genius - it simply leaves me wanting more, and frustrated that the chapters don't go on forever. Perhaps there will some day be a Part Two?...

This is a wonderful book. Learned, entertaining, and packed with both insight and argument, all crammed in between some of the greatest poems of the English language. To be thoroughly recommended!

A rhyme ending every line, that's poetry... or is it?
This book is an academic treatment of poetry but don't be put off by this as it is also an enjoyable read for just lovers of poetry. The authors take you through the different poetic forms with copious examples of each form as well as biographical notes of the poets.
I recommend this book to every serious student of poetry as well as to those who enjoy poetry without bothering too much about its formal structure.