How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love With Poetry

An examination from an award-winning poet and critic of the reasons for and meanings of poetry offers an analysis of poems by Wordsworth, Plath, Neruda, and others to precisely delineate their unique power and their ineffable message. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

Edward Hirsch is a professor of English at the University of Houston. The author of four books of poetry, he has won many awards, including the Lavan Younger Poets Award, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, the Prix de Rome, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (for his collection Wild Gratitude), and, in 1998, the American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature and a MacArthur Fellowship.