How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse
Published by Harper Perennial, 2018, softcover, 193 pages, uncorrected proof copy, condition: very good.
From the bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes this essential primer to reading poetry like a professor that unlocks the keys to enjoying works from Lord Byron to the Beatles. No literary form is as admired and feared as poetry. Admired for its lengthy pedigreea line of poets extending back to a time before recorded historyand a ubiquitous presence in virtually all cultures, poetry is also revered for its great beauty and the powerful emotions it evokes. But the form has also instilled trepidation in its many admirers mainly because of a lack of familiarity and knowledge.
Poetry demands more from readersintellectually, emotionally, and spirituallythan other literary forms. Most of us started out loving poetry because it filled our beloved children's books from Dr. Seuss to Robert Louis Stevenson. Eventually, our reading shifted to prose and later when we encountered poetry again, we had no recent experience to make it feel familiar. But reading poetry doesnt need to be so overwhelming. In an entertaining and engaging voice, Thomas C. Foster shows readers how to overcome their fear of poetry and learn to enjoy it once more. From classic poets such as Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to later poets such as E.E. Cummings, Billy Collins, and Seamus Heaney, How to Read Poetry Like a Professor examines a wide array of poems and teaches readers: With How to Read Poetry Like a Professor , readers can rediscover poetry and reap its many rewards.
This is the book I wanted and needed to read, though I did not know that when I found it on a best-of list and put a hold on it at our library. I committed to reading poetry more than 2+ years ago now but I had not had any type of formal poetry education since a one semester elective course in my junior year at university. Prior to that, there were a couple of weeks of learning to read and write poetry in 7th grade english where I famously wrote a haiku about love that my teacher thought was outstanding. Perhaps it was this that has led me all these years later to want to really learn and read more.
Professor Foster's book is entertaining and humorous but it was also serious and I learned topics over again that I had forgotten and I learned much that was new to me. Now that I have finished, I feel less intimidated by the poems I am reading and more aware of what a poem is and does. There were also many examples of poems and poetry books by authors I have not read and have put on my TBR list for the future including William Carlos Williams' Sour Grapes, Danusha Lameris' The Moons of August, Marianne Moore's poetry, and Christina Rossetii's poetry. This is just an excellent little book for a novice poetry reader like myself. A 5-star seal of approval from me.
