Sound and Form in Modern PoetryWhy are poems important? What do people mean when they use the word prosody? How does a poem read and sound? How does a poem's shape--its form--help to create its meaning? "Sound and Form in Modern Poetry" provides useful answers to these questions for readers of poetry. Through careful attention to the poems of modern masters, the book offers an accessible guide to the way today's poems really work, and to the way they are linked in style to poems of earlier times. Poet, critic, and editor Robert McDowell has updated this classic text in the light of the poetic and critical developments of the last three decades. Segments on Dickinson, Robinson, Frost, Jeffers, and Lowell, among other poets, have been greatly expanded, and Ashbery, Creeley, Ginsberg, Hall, Kees, Kumin, Levertov, Levine, O'Hara, Plath, Rich, Simpson, and Wilbur added, among others. The epilogue discusses a new generation of poets whose works will likely be read well into the next century-- among others, Thomas M. Disch, Rita Dove, Dana Gioia, Emily Grosholz, Mark Jarman, Molly Peacock, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Timothy Steele, Mary Swander, and Marilyn Nelson Waniek. Over the last ten years, the most inspiring topic of conversation and argument among poets and their readers has been the resurgence of narrative and traditional forms. The new "Sound and Form in Modern Poetry" is a seminal text in this discussion, examining not only this movement but all of the important developments (Dadaism, Surrealism, Imagism, Language Poetry, and the Confessional School) that have defined our poetry in the twentieth century and have set the stage for poetry's continued life in the twenty-first. The original "Sound and Form in Modern Poetry" enjoyed extensive classroom use as a text; the revised version promises to be even more accessible, and more essential, for years to come. The late Harvey Gross was Professor of Comparative Literature, State University of New York at Stony Brook. Robert McDowell is publisher and editor of Story Line Press, and is also poet, critic, translator, fiction writer, and essayist. |
From inside the book
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Page 79
... appear as “ free ” as the Song of Myself : " My nerves are bad to - night . Yes , bad . Stay with me . " Speak to me . Why do you never speak . Speak . " What are you thinking of ? What thinking ? What ? " I never know what you are ...
... appear as “ free ” as the Song of Myself : " My nerves are bad to - night . Yes , bad . Stay with me . " Speak to me . Why do you never speak . Speak . " What are you thinking of ? What thinking ? What ? " I never know what you are ...
Page 122
... appear- ance . ” 17 The poem's printed appearance forms a metaphorical struc- ture , a conceit ; we question whether to interpret the shape of the pattern poem rhetorically or rhythmically . Is the shape a matter of figurative language ...
... appear- ance . ” 17 The poem's printed appearance forms a metaphorical struc- ture , a conceit ; we question whether to interpret the shape of the pattern poem rhetorically or rhythmically . Is the shape a matter of figurative language ...
Page 235
... appear to live on their prosody alone ; the emo- tional force and solemn dignity of their rhythms seem , on first impact , independent of what the language is saying . But the metrical craft surprises with its sudden relevance ...
... appear to live on their prosody alone ; the emo- tional force and solemn dignity of their rhythms seem , on first impact , independent of what the language is saying . But the metrical craft surprises with its sudden relevance ...
Contents
The Moon through the Trees | 1 |
Prosody as Rhythmic Cognition | 8 |
The Scansion of the English Meters | 22 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
achieve alliteration anapestic blank verse Bridges Bridges's caesura Cantos Collected Poems couplet Crane criticism echoes emotional English excerpts experience Ezra Pound Faber falling rhythm feeling feet formal Four Quartets Four-stress free verse Frost grammar Hart Crane hear hexameter Hopkins Hopkins's iambic iambs Ibid images imagist Jeffers's language last line light Lowell Lowell's lyric meaning modern move movement never night nonmetrical prosody opening passage pattern pause pentameter poem's poet poet's poetic poetry prose quantity Ransom regular rhetorical rhyme rhythmic structure Robert Roethke scan scansion second foot sense song sound speech spring sprung rhythm stanza Stevens stresses strong-stress meter syllable-stress meter syllable-stress metric syllables syntactical syntax T. S. Eliot technique tetrameter texture tion traditional trisyllabic trochaic trochees turn unstressed vers libre versification visual voice W. H. Auden Waste Land Whitman Williams wind words writing Yeats York Yvor Winters