A Poet's Glossary


Book Description

A major addition to the literature of poetry, Edward Hirsch’s sparkling new work is a compilation of forms, devices, groups, movements, isms, aesthetics, rhetorical terms, and folklore—a book that all readers, writers, teachers, and students of poetry will return to over and over. Hirsch has delved deeply into the poetic traditions of the world, returning with an inclusive, international compendium. Moving gracefully from the bards of ancient Greece to the revolutionaries of Latin America, from small formal elements to large mysteries, he provides thoughtful definitions for the most important poetic vocabulary, imbuing his work with a lifetime of scholarship and the warmth of a man devoted to his art. Knowing how a poem works is essential to unlocking its meaning. Hirsch’s entries will deepen readers’ relationships with their favorite poems and open greater levels of understanding in each new poem they encounter. Shot through with the enthusiasm, authority, and sheer delight that made How to Read a Poem so beloved, A Poet’s Glossary is a new classic.




A History of Free Verse


Book Description

This book examines the most salient and misunderstood aspect of twentieth-century poetry, free verse. Although the form is generally approached as if it were one indissoluble lump, it is actually a group of differing poetic genres proceeding from much different assumptions. Separate chapters on T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, H.D., and William Carlos Williams elucidate many of these assumptions and procedures, while other chapters address more general theoretical questions and trace the continuity of Modern poetics in contemporary poetry. Taking a historical and aesthetic approach, this study demonstrates that many of the forms considered to have been invented in the Modern period actually extend underappreciated traditions. Not only does this book examine the classical influence on Modern poetry, it also features discussions of the poetics of John Milton, Abraham Cowley, Matthew Arnold, and a host of lesser-known poets. Throughout it is an investigation of the prosodic issues that free verse foregrounds, particularly those focusing on the reader's part in interpreting poetic rhythm.




Ghost Letters


Book Description

In Ghost Letters, one emigrates to America again, and again, and again, though one also never leaves Senegal, the country of one’s birth; one grows up in America, and attends university in America, though one also never leaves Senegal, the country of one’s birth; one wrestles with one’s American blackness in ways not possible in Senegal, though one never leaves Senegal, the country of one’s birth; and one sees more deeply into Americanness than any native-born American could. Ghost Letters is a 21st century Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, though it is a notebook of arrival and being in America. It is a major achievement. —Shane McCrae




101 Great American Poems


Book Description

Rich treasury of verse from the 19th and 20th centuries includes works by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, other notables.




Poems by Walt Whitman


Book Description

Walt Whitman is widely regarded as one of the masters of American poetry. Here are collected his finest poems, a perfect companion for any fan of Whitman's work.




Free Verse


Book Description

A moving, bittersweet tale reminiscent of Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons set in a West Virginia coal-mining town When her brother dies in a fire, Sasha Harless has no one left, and nowhere to turn. After her father died in the mines and her mother ran off, he was her last caretaker. They’d always dreamed of leaving Caboose, West Virginia together someday, but instead she’s in foster care, feeling more stuck and broken than ever. But then Sasha discovers family she didn’t know she had, and she finally has something to hold onto, especially sweet little Mikey, who’s just as broken as she is. Sasha even makes her first friend at school, and is slowly learning to cope with her brother’s death through writing poetry, finding a new way to express herself when spoken words just won’t do. But when tragedy strikes the mine her cousin works in, Sasha fears the worst and takes Mikey and runs, with no plans to return. In this sensitive and poignant portrayal, Sarah Dooley shows us that life, like poetry, doesn’t always take the form you intend.




The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems


Book Description

An anthology of American poems, is arranged chronologically, from colonial alphabet rhymes to Native American cradle songs to contemporary poems. 50 illustrations, 20 in color.




The Ghost of Meter


Book Description

A groundbreaking study of the connections among meter, the poetic unconscious, and wider literary and cultural forces




The New Pagans: An Anthology of American Free Verse, 1895-1922


Book Description

Modern American verse was born in an explosion of creative energy, breaking from traditional poetic forms to create fascinating and wholly original work. The launching pad for legends such as E.E. Cummings, Carl Sandburg and Wallace Stevens, the free verse scene fostered the talents of dozens of writers who are largely forgotten by the general reading public. The New Pagans aims to right history's wrongs by collecting the best work from these neglected heroes of modernist poetry in a bold anthology, spotlighting the efforts of writers whose voices were as brave as they were unique. Featuring poetry by Amy Lowell, Babette Deutsch, Malcolm Cowley, Yvor Winters, Glenway Wescott and many others.




Wonder Rooms


Book Description

"The poems in Wonder Rooms, this powerful, heart-breaking, elegantly composed collection, are like the cabinets within such a room. Each is its own intimate interior space, where a reader is invited into the unknown. Some of these poetic spaces hold natural historiesùcrickets, dangerously beautiful corals, Provenτal snails. Others open to the terrors of love and motherhood, still others to the chaotic orders of the bestiary. This is an amazingly gorgeous and intelligent bookùa wonder, a pleasure, and an invitation to inward voyage." --Jennifer Atkinson