How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse

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.
ASIN: 006211378X
VSKU: BVV.006211378X.A
Condition: Acceptable
Author/Artist:Foster, Thomas C.
Binding: Paperback
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: The item is very worn but is perfectly usable. Signs of wear can include aesthetic issues such as scratches, dents, worn and creased covers, folded page corners and minor liquid stains. All pages and the cover are intact, but the dust cover may be missing. Pages may include moderate to heavy amount of notes and highlighting, but the text is not obscured or unreadable. Page edges may have foxing age related spots and browning . May NOT include discs, access code or other supplemental materials.