The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
Where to buy The Building of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms books online?
- ISBN13: 9780393321784
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Product Description
Two beloved and esteemed poets have collaborated on this intimate and useful anthology illuminating the history, practice, and marvel of our most elusive art. Proposed for all persons who like poetry, including teachers, readers, writers, and students, The Building of a Poem will be especially valued by persons who feel that an understanding of form—sonnet, ballad, villanelle, sestina, etc.—would enhance their appreciation of poetry, but are daunted by the terms, the names, and the histories of various poetic forms. This anthology draws the reader in, by example and explanation, to the excitement and entertainment of these forms. It clarifies 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. Contemporary poets can be seen here trying out the same forms that poets used hundreds of years ago, but in the new circumstances of a intricate modern world. In this way poetic form is illustrated not as a series of rules, but as a passionate conversation in which every reader of poetry can become involved. Amazon.com Review
The Building of a Poem is among the best how-to-read-poetry titles. Edited by two of our greatest living poets, one Irish and female, the additional American and male, it is both an exploration of poetic forms and an anthology. Eavan Boland and Mark Strand each offer an introduction and then give us a series of chapters devoted to particular verse forms–the sonnet, the ballad, the sestina, the villanelle, blank verse, the stanza–as well as a long section devoted to what they to some extent abstractedly call shaping forms. This refers to poetic structures customary not by a point rhyme and/or metrical pattern but by content: the elegy, for example, or the pastoral or ode. The book then concludes with a section on open forms. Each chapter is conveniently subdivided, each topic simply defined: a single page gives “The Ballad at a Glance” (or, for that matter, the pantoum) as a quick overview of the form’s structure. A page or two on the history of the form follows, along with a brief comment on “the contemporary context.” Then a chronological anthology of poems demonstrates the particular form. In the sonnet’s case, for instance, we are treated to 23 brilliantly chosen examples–everything from Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” to Seamus Heaney’s “The Haw Hurricane lantern” to Mary Jo Salter’s playful “Half a Double Sonnet.” The section then concludes with another brief analysis of one example. In this spot, the villanelle features Elizabeth Bishop’s classic heartbreaker, “One Art,” and blank verse gives us far too brief a take on Robert Frost’s tantalizing “Directive.” Itself worth the fee of admission, the poem starts:
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simply by the loss
of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble monument in the weather,
There is a house that is no more than a house
Upon a farm that is no more than a farm
And in a town that is no more than a town.
One can readily see both the advantages and the limitations of such a format: definitions are kept lean, at times approaching the sound bite, and the fleeting sentences and brief paragraphs regularly seem designed for a readership more accustomed to television journalism than to the complexities of Dante (see, for example, the one-page history of the sestina). All of this looks like an attempt to reach an audience of both college students and all-purpose readers. While more information might help (brief comments on why certain poems in the anthology are defined as odes, pastorals, or elegies, for example), the bottom line is that The Building of a Poem does an brilliant job of taking the inexperienced reader inside the mystery of poetic form. In these terms the volume succeeds, giving us a way into the history of poetry, along with an brilliant anthology as a starting point for a deeper exploration of the glories of the genre. –Doug Thorpe
Buy Cheap The Building of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms Online
Related posts:
Prompt shiping and and the book was just like it was described. Thanks. Sara
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This is a fine and useful book within its range, covering the various forms included from early to later works, but should not an anthology of poetic forms also include such marvelous and vital Eastern forms as the Tanka, Sijo, Haiku, etc., (or even an example or two of modern concrete poetry.) Such Eastern forms are certainly more well loved than the villanelle, for example, and should have been included.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
If you’re studying poetry for pleasure or for school, you need this book.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
The examples are archaic, the introductory material weak, the discussion of how to write cursory.
Save your money for STRONG MEASURES by Dacey and Jauss, a much more expensive book, but worth it many times over.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
If you are looking for teaching on the mechanics of different forms this book is about fives pages from being a door stop. Don’t waste your money.
If all you need are examples of the different forms this is your book.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5