University of Michigan Press, 2012
“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.”
“Personal, erudite, and comprehensive . . . the product of many years’ work and a lifetime of serious engagement with poetry.”
– B. Wallenstein, CUNY City College, Choice
“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 fixed forms. Here, 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.” -University of Michigan Press
Note: A Poet’s Ear consists of the chapters on form and meter from Annie Finch’s more comprehensive textbook, A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry
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
Reviews:
”Personal, erudite, and comprehensive . . . the product of many years’ work and a lifetime of serious engagement with poetry.”
– B. Wallenstein, CUNY City College, Choice
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