The Art Of The Poetic Line

Excellent

No review, since it is being read by my son.

Excellent book on the poetic line and it's variations. It also gives a casual reader of poetry insight into how to read a poem with many examples. I recommend this book for young beginning poets as well as those who have been writing for a longtime that have never been in a workshop class. A lot of people do not know how to read a poem which I believe derives from teachers instructions from grades 6 through 12 suggesting that students read a poem line by line, hesitating into the next line. That is fine for early grades 6 and 8, but once a student reaches 9th grade and up, they are introduced to more complex forms and not the poetry they encountered before. How to read a poem begins with recitation and much relies on the line and how a poet choose to break the line (Robert Duncan, T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson) or play with space (e.e. cummings) or lack of space (as in Whitman's long lines). Teachers themselves mostly for the lack or dislike do not like teaching poetry for having the same education that didn't teach them to read poem correctly. I myself have friends who don't or can't read a poem correctly and thus don't get a poem. So I have taken it upon myself to show them how to read a poem aloud and show them the cues that are found in grammar, punctuation, and mostly the sound. I can say they now can enjoy poetry a bit more than before; though, its not their choice to read. Yet sometimes I show them or give them poems to read that I enjoy and am delighted in their reaction.This book is a must for students in early high school through to the first few years of college. It doesn't matter when its introduced as long as it is. Longenbach begins with an example from Shakespeare's King Lear, showing variations on how the play is presented to modern students. He then goes to the original folio versions which relied on iambic pentameter for the most part. Modern versions choose to not have it in lines but continuous text which looses the magic of the plays. The physical text of the folio showcase Shakespeare's language to full effect and aids the enjoyment of the plot as well as the magic of words. Longenbach reaches far into the cannons of poetry both past and contemporary providing the reader with why poetry matters as much as rap and other genre's of music today.

The title I've used here is taken from sport.In football the teams line up against each other, offense v defense. Choices of where to put the players abound. Will your line be balanced or unbalanced? Will you use wingbacks or slot receivers or two tight ends, one back or empty backfield? Will you play a 4-3 or a 3-4 defense? Two deep zones or man to man? Each line up lets you do certain things better than other things and much depends on your intent, how it is you want to play the game.In rugby, they have line outs. The ball is put into play by one side throwing it down a line of essentially alternating players from the two teams. How high and how far down the line you throw it determines who gets the ball and what can be done with it.The line in poetry has similar effects. You can do some things better than others with certain kinds of lines than others and how far down the line you throw the accent, the crux of your syntax, determines whether the play works well or perhaps not so well. James Longenbach shows you that and explains why the various choices work the way they do.Longenbach's own prose is clear and concise (not always true with poets writing prose). He uses multiple examples, some well known others not so much, to illustrate the various choices made by different poets regarding the lineation of various poems. If you want to write better yourself or just have a deeper and better appreciation of poems you read, this little book will help. For me, reading this has led me to revalue Williams Calos Williams and to discover George Oppen entirely.I should note that the 4 star rating has to do with the fact that I purchased this with the two other "Art Of" books it is offered with on this page (Syntax and Description) and I felt the need to differentiate the two I liked a lot from the one I loved. Highly recommended.

A must-read craft series, this is among my favorites. Makes a very complicated subject mad accessible, which I really appreciate. Especially loved the unexpected section on prose!