Poetry: The Basics

by J. Wainwright

How do I read a poem? Do I really understand poetry?
This comprehensive guide demystifies the world of poetry, exploring poetic forms and traditions which can at first seem bewildering. Showing how any reader can gain more pleasure from poetry, it looks at the ways in which poetry interacts with the language we use in our everyday lives and explores how poems use language and form to create meaning.
Drawing on examples ranging from Chaucer to children's rhymes, Cole Porter to Carol Ann Duffy, and from around the English-speaking world, it looks at aspects The Basics is an invaluable and easy to read guide for anyone wanting to get to grips with reading and writing poetry.

238 pages, Hardcover

First published June 18, 2004

Reviews

[Michael Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book helps explain how poetry works and how it is different from prose by using examples from various sources. It is not exhaustive and not, as had been promised, extremely easy to understand, but it is interesting and may be returned to often for pleasure and for edification. It is big on use of language and form to show how everyday concepts may be made more of. While it will help the lay reader understand what has gone before in the field, I’m not certain it will help new practitioners immeasurably improve their writing of poetry, that is, it is more of a “see how some of it has been done,” rather than “here’s how you can do it.”