A Poet’s Ear: A Handbook of Meter and Form
For beginning or advanced students of poetry focused on the art of structuring a poem, A Poet’s Ear serves as a handbook to writing in numerous repeating rhythms (meters) and formal poetic patterns. ( I don’t like the terms closed, fixed, conventional, or traditional, since my use of poetic meter and form is none of these things:)
A Poet’s Ear includes all the sections on meter and form from my larger book A Poet’s Craft.
Do you need both books? Some readers choose one or the other. Others like to keep a copy of each, A Poet’s Craft on the reference shelf and A Poet’s Ear on the writing desk.
— Annie Finch
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Publish Date: May 28, 2013
Pages: 440
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-0472050666
The best book I know about making, writing, shaping, & sharing poetry.
Peter Meinke, Poet and MFA Faculty, University of Tampa
From The Publisher
Annie Finch’s remarkably in-depth introduction to poetic form in English opens a new and exciting world to contemporary poets. From the basic meters and traditional European forms of the ballad and the sonnet to poetic forms brought to English from worldwide cultures and postmodern forms and techniques, A Poet’s Ear serves as both a survey and a guide to the exploration of poetic form. More diverse and comprehensive than any other form handbook, A Poet’s Ear will be essential to the serious student of poetry.
Excerpt
A Poet’s Ear offers a thorough and detailed discussion of what is commonly acknowledged to be the most difficult aspect of poetry to teach and learn–writing in meter and form–and, more than most existing form guides, takes a stimulating and culturally inclusive view of formal poetics, from sonnets and sapphics, epics and dactyls to rap, blue, pantoums, and avant-garde procedural techniques.
This book is for everyone who wants to become skilled enough in the art of poetry that you can reach the place where writing allows the poet and the poem simply to be. That is the goal of the ancient alchemy of this unique art.
More Information
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
PART I
1. HEARING THE BEAT: ACCENT AND ACCENTUAL POETRY
Lexical, Phrasal and Performative Accent
Accent and Emotion
Syllabic Poetry
Accentual Poetry, Rap, and Free Verse
2. METER: A LANGUAGE FOR THE BODY
Prosody and History
Accentual-Syllabic Meter
Meter in Contemporary Poetry
The Four Most Common Metrical Patterns
The Metrical Foot
How to Scan a Poem
Why Bother?
3. THE MANY VOICES OF IAMBIC METER
Blank Verse, Enjambment, and Caesura
Five Basic Variations in Iambic Pentameter: Trochees, Spondees, Pyrrhics, Headless and Extra-Syllable Lines
Expressive Variation and Keeping Your Balance
Iambic Dimeter, Trimeter, Tetrameter and Fourteeners
Iambic Pentameter in the Twenty-First Century
4. THE METRICAL PALETTE : BEYOND IAMBIC PENTAMETER
Anapestic Meter
Trochaic Meter
Dactylic Meter
Mixed Meters
Amphibrachs, Dipodics, and Hendecasyllabics
Tips for Writing in Meter
5. FORMS OF FREE VERSE
Six Types of Free Verse
Prose Poems
The Line in Free Verse
PART II
6. STANZAS: A POEM’S BREATHING ROOMS
The Stanza in Free Verse, Form, and Shaped Poems
Two and Three-line Stanzas
Four-Line Stanzas
Longer Stanzas
7. WORTH REPEATING: POEMS BASED ON REPETITION
Repetition in Free Verse and Form
The Blues
Villanelle
Sestina
Rondeau
Paradelle
Ghazal
Pantoum
Refrain in Free Verse and Form
8. DEEP STORY: THE BALLAD
9. CHAOS IN FOURTEEN LINES: THE SONNET
The Italian and English Sonnet
Writing Sonnets
Sonnets and Sequences
Variations and Deformations of the Sonnet
AFTERWORD