The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem

"The Art of Poetryi is both a superb technical manual and an authentic guide to the art of reading poetry. With brilliance and extraordinary lucidity, Wolosky illuminates such essential matters as metaphor, poetic voice, and the crucial relation of rhetoric to poetic meaning. I cannot imagine a more useful and distinguished book of this kind."--Harold Bloom, author of The Anxiety of Influence

A uniquely comprehensive, step-by-step introduction to poetic form, The Art of Poetry moves progressively from smaller units such as the word, line, and image, to larger features such as verse forms and voice.In fourteen engaging, eloquently written chapters, Wolosky explores in depth how poetry works while offering brilliant readings of some of the finest lyric poetry in the English and American traditions. Both readers new to poetry and poetry veterans will be moved and enlightened as Wolosky interprets works by William Shakespeare, John Donne, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, and others.Featuring a comprehensive bibliography, a glossary of poetic terms, and a new appendix of suggestions for further reading, The Art of Poetry is a rich source of inspiration.

Shira Wolosky, Professor of English and American Literature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Contents
Preface
1. Word Choice
2. Syntax and the Poetic Line
3. Images: Simile and Metaphor
4. Metaphor and the Sonnet
5. The Sonnet
6. Poetic Conventions
7. More Verse Forms
8. Personification
9. Poetic Voice
10. Gender and Poetic Voice
11. Poetic Rhythm: Metric
12. Poetic Rhythm: Sound and Rhyme
13. Rhetoric: More Tropes
14. Incomplete Figures and the Art of Reading
Appendix
Glossary
Bibliographical Backgrounds
Index of Poems
Index of Poets
Index of Terms and Topics