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Annie Finch

A Poet’s Ear: A Handbook of Meter and Form

A_Poet_s_Ear_Cover_grande

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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