HT READ POETRY LIKE PROFESS - Softcover

Foster, Thomas C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062791877 ISBN 13: 9780062791870

Publisher: Harper, 2018

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes this essential guide to poetry that unlocks the keys to enjoying works from Lord Byron to the Beatles.

No literary form is as admired and feared as poetry. Admired for its lengthy pedigree―a line of poets extending back to a time before recorded history―and a ubiquitous presence in virtually all cultures, this powerful form of literary analysis is also revered for its great beauty and the powerful emotions it evokes. But the form has also instilled trepidation in its many admirers mainly because of a lack of familiarity and knowledge.

Poetry demands more from readers―intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually―than other literary forms. Most of us started out loving poetry because it filled our beloved children's books from Dr. Seuss to Robert Louis Stevenson. Eventually, our reading shifted to prose and later when we encountered poetry again, we had no recent experience to make it feel familiar. But understanding poetry doesn’t need to be so overwhelming. In an entertaining and engaging voice, Thomas C. Foster shows readers how to overcome their fear of poetry and learn to enjoy it once more.

From classic poets such as Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to later poets such as E.E. Cummings, Billy Collins, and Seamus Heaney, How to Read Poetry Like a Professor examines a wide array of poems and teaches readers:

• How to read a poem to understand its primary meaning.
• The different technical elements of poetry such as meter, diction, rhyme, line structures, length, order, regularity, and how to learn to see these elements as allies rather than adversaries.
• How to listen for a poem’s secondary meaning by paying attention to the echoes that the language of poetry summons up.
• How to hear the music in poems―and the poetry in songs!

With How to Read Poetry Like a Professor, readers can rediscover how to read poems and reap its many rewards.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas C. Foster is the author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, How to Write Like a Writer, How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor, and other works. He is professor emeritus of English at the University of Michigan, Flint, where he taught classes in contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry as well as creative writing and freelance writing. He is also the author of several books on twentieth-century British and Irish literature and poetry.

From the Back Cover

No literary form is as admired and feared as poetry. Admired for its lengthy pedigree—a line of poets extending back to a time before recorded history—and a ubiquitous presence in virtually all cultures, poetry is also revered for its great beauty and the powerful emotions it evokes. But the form has also instilled trepidation in its many admirers mainly because of a lack of familiarity and knowledge. 

Poetry demands more from readers—intellectually, emotion-ally, and spiritually—than other literary forms. Most of us started out loving poetry because it filled our beloved children’s books from Dr. Seuss to Robert Louis Stevenson. Eventually, our reading shifted to prose and later when we encountered poetry again, we had no recent experience to make it feel familiar. But reading poetry doesn’t need to be so overwhelming. In an entertaining and engaging voice, Thomas C. Foster shows readers how to overcome their fear of poetry and learn to enjoy it once more. 

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062791877
• ISBN 13: 9780062791870
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320