How to Read (and Write about) Poetry

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements How to Use This Book Introduction: What Makes Poetry Poetry and Why Are We So Afraid of It?Poem Discussion One: Sonnet 130, by William Shakespeare More Sonnets by William Shakespeare Sonnet 18 Sonnet 20 Sonnet 73 Sonnet 116 Poem Discussion Two: Harlem Dancer, by Claude McKay More Poems by Writers of the Harlem Renaissance The Castaways, Claude McKay Tableau, Countee Cullen The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes Letter to My Sister, Anne Spencer A Mona Lisa, Angelina Weld Grimké Poem Discussion Three: I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed, by Edna St. Vincent Millay More Modern and Contemporary Sonnets Poetics Against the Angel of Death, Phyllis Webb Nothing in That Drawer, Ron Padgett Sonnet #15, Alice Notley so’net 1, Paul Dutton Sonnet for Bonnie, Darren Wershler-Henry Dim Lady, Harryette Mullen LXXIII, Sonnet L’Abbé Poem Discussion Four: The Dance, by William Carlos Williams More Ekphrastic Poems Young Sycamore, William Carlos Williams Venus Transiens, Amy Lowell Preciosilla, Gertrude Stein Why I Am Not a Painter, Frank O’Hara The Starry Night, Anne Sexton from Pictograms from the Interior of B.C., Fred Wah Granite Weaving, Valerie Martínez Poem Discussion Five: Ode on a Grecian Urn, by John Keats More Odes, Apostrophes, Addresses To Night, Charlotte Smith A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg July Man, Margaret Avison To My Twenties, Kenneth Koch Late One Night, Margaret Christakos Winnipeg, you’re so pretty, Molly Cross-Blanchard Poem Discussion Six: The Tyger, by William Blake More Poems about Animals The Lamb, William Blake The Flea, John Donne A narrow Fellow in the Grass, Emily Dickinson A DOG, Gertrude Stein The Shark, E.J. Pratt Bird-Witted, Marianne Moore THE ARK, Nasser Hussain Poem Discussion Seven: r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r, by E.E. Cummings More Concrete Poems Easter Wings, George Herbert l(a, E.E. Cummings Forsythia, Mary Ellen Solt Cycle No. 22, bpNichol In Medias Res, Michael McFee Love Song, Margaret Christakos Flattening spirits … , Sachiko Murakami Find Hope, Simina Banu Poem Discussion Eight: Daddy, by Sylvia Plath More Poems “for the ear” Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll God’s Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins The Cat and the Saxophone (2 A.M.), Langston Hughes at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989, Lucille Clifton Blah-Blah, Harryette Mullen Zong! #1, M. NourbeSe Philip Ravine, Louis Cabri Poem Discussion Nine: kitchenette building, by Gwendolyn Brooks More Poems Displaying the Poetic Force of Syntax When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, Walt Whitman In a Station of the Metro, Ezra Pound ASPARAGUS, Gertrude Stein since feeling is first, E.E. Cummings Rolling Motion, Erin Mouré monday, Lisa Robertson Winter, Mark Truscott AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN, Terrance Hayes Poem Discussion Ten: The Three Emilys, by Dorothy Livesay More Feminist Poems Prologue, Anne Bradstreet In an Artist’s Studio, Christina Rossetti Sheltered Garden, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) Blues Spiritual for Mammy Prater, Dionne Brand Body Politics, Louise Bernice Halfe I Wish I Had More Sisters, Brenda Shaughnessy A Brief Guide to Meter How to Write about Poetry Glossary of Poetic Terms

About the Author :
Susan Holbrook is a poet, a critic, and Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor.

Review :
"Students need textbooks like this, to show them the range of poetry's pleasures and to guide them toward becoming better readers and writers. But educators need them too, to provide models for how to present our artform with all the rigour it deserves while still making room for questions, affection, and wit. Susan Holbrook is a wonderful teacher--contemporary, diverse in her tastes, wearing her erudition lightly, and pointing out pathways rather than giving directions. I won't be the only reader who is grateful to have learned from her." -- Adam Sol, Victoria College, University of Toronto "How to Read (and Write About) Poetry is a consummate guide to the rich, nuanced field of poetry. For nervous novitiates, it demystifies the artform and provides an array of practical points of access. Holbrook is a wonderful, welcoming guide. For more comfortable poetry readers, pedagogues, and poets, this book presents a skilful demonstration of how to talk about poetic language without killing it. Indeed, this is no exegesis as exhumation herein: you will find no dust upon the carefully curated poems chosen from across the field. With language itself as the loamy soil, you can almost feel her bringing the poems alive, until they pulse with life and mystery as she guides readers through their lush wildness." -- Gregory Betts, Brock University "In this approachable and compelling collection, Susan Holbrook gathers together traditional sonnets and irascible ones, the choicest concrete texts and resounding poems for the ear, the well-wrought urns, and a veritable playground of repetition, apostrophe, enjambment, and metonymy." -- Nicole Markotic, University of Windsor