Reading Poetry

Description

This book is about reading and studying poetry. Using fully-worked examples and complete poems wherever possible, it shows all the key elements of poetry 'at work' in poems|This book is about reading and studying poetry. Using fully-worked examples and complete poems wherever possible, it shows all the key elements of poetry 'at work' in poems -- .

Peter Barry is Professor of English at Aberystwyth University -- .

Peter Barry's Reading poetry succeeds in the most difficult of tasks: it is at once introductory, sure to help novice students of poetry find their way through what may seem a bewildering maze of "poetic" features, and yet advanced enough to challenge the most sophisticated reader. It moves outward from the poetry building blocks - line, meter, image - to questions of poetry and visuality, poetry and space-time, poetry and theory. Commonsensical, wise, witty and open-minded, Reading poetry draws on an impressively wide set of examples, from Thomas Wyatt to such experimentalists as Tom Raworth. This wonderfully unpretentious book is a classic of its kind. Professor Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University -- .