Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters
This collection provides contemporary readers, for the first time, with a sampler of the full variety of metrical patterns. This one-of-a-kind anthology is packed with great poems that beg to be read aloud. Welcome to the pleasure of poetry!
Publisher: Random House/Everymans Library
Publish Date: March 31, 2015
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0375712487
Coedited with Alexandra Oliver
Metre is the heartbeat of poetry, what gives it its rhythm and conjures its mood, and Annie Finch takes the reader through the spectrum of metres to demonstrate the range and versatility of poetry’s patterns.
Jane Craddock, Nudge
From The Publisher
Measure for Measure is organized by meter, with brief explanatory headnotes covering accentual meter, trochees, anapests, dactyls, iambs, ballad meter, and more exotic species like amphibrachs, dipodics, hendecasyllabics, sapphics, and more.
The entrancing examples of each meter are drawn from a wide range of poetic traditions, from Ovid and Sappho to Shakespeare and Milton, encompassing the Victorians, the Romantics, ballads, folk songs, poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and modern-day hip hop.
Whether performed aloud or enjoyed in solitude, Measure for Measure is a treat for the ear, the heart, and the mind.
Excerpt
I WOULD LIVE IN YOUR LOVE
I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
Borne up by each wave as it passes,
drawn down by each wave that recedes;
I would empty my soul as the dreams that have gathered in me,
I would beat with your heart as it beats,
I would follow your soul as it leads.
Sara Teasdale, from the Anapestic Meter section of Measure for Measure