Product Description

Two beloved and esteemed poets have collaborated on this intimate and useful anthology illuminating the history, practice, and wonder of our most elusive art. Intended for all those who love poetry, including teachers, readers, writers, and students, The Making of a Poem will be especially valued by those who feel that an understanding of form—sonnet, ballad, villanelle, sestina, etc.—would enhance their appreciation of poetry, but are daunted by the terms, the names, and the histories of various poetic forms. This anthology draws the reader in, by example and explanation, to the excitement and entertainment of these forms. It explains their origins, traces their development, and shows examples from the past and present. In a feature called "The form at a glance" the reader can try his or her own hand writing a particular form. Included are essays by each of the editors describing their own personal journeys toward a form for their poetic voice. Above all, this anthology shows that poetic form is a continuing adventure. Contemporary poets can be seen here trying out the same forms that poets used hundreds of years ago, but in the new circumstances of a complicated modern world. In this way poetic form is illustrated not as a series of rules, but as a passionate conversation in which every reader of poetry can become involved.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16765 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.com Review
The Making of a Poem is among the best how-to-read-poetry titles. Edited by two of our greatest living poets, one Irish and female, the other American and male, it is both an exploration of poetic forms and an anthology. Eavan Boland and Mark Strand each offer an introduction and then give us a series of chapters devoted to particular verse forms--the sonnet, the ballad, the sestina, the villanelle, blank verse, the stanza--as well as a long section devoted to what they somewhat vaguely call shaping forms. This refers to poetic structures established not by a specific rhyme and/or metrical pattern but by content: the elegy, for example, or the pastoral or ode. The book then concludes with a section on open forms. Each chapter is conveniently subdivided, each topic simply defined: a single page gives "The Ballad at a Glance" (or, for that matter, the pantoum) as a quick overview of the form's structure. A page or two on the history of the form follows, along with a brief comment on "the contemporary context." Then a chronological anthology of poems demonstrates the particular form. In the sonnet's case, for instance, we are treated to 23 brilliantly chosen examples--everything from Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" to Seamus Heaney's "The Haw Lantern" to Mary Jo Salter's playful "Half a Double Sonnet." The section then concludes with another brief analysis of one example. In this spot, the villanelle features Elizabeth Bishop's classic heartbreaker, "One Art," and blank verse gives us far too brief a take on Robert Frost's tantalizing "Directive." Itself worth the price of admission, the poem begins:

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simply by the loss
of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more than a house
Upon a farm that is no more than a farm
And in a town that is no more than a town.

One can readily see both the advantages and the limitations of such a format: definitions are kept lean, at times approaching the sound bite, and the short sentences and brief paragraphs often seem designed for a readership more accustomed to journalism than to the complexities of Dante (see, for example, the one-page history of the sestina). All of this looks like an attempt to reach an audience of both college students and general readers. While more information might help (brief comments on why certain poems in the anthology are defined as odes, pastorals, or elegies, for example), the bottom line is that The Making of a Poem does an excellent job of taking the inexperienced reader inside the mystery of poetic form. In these terms the volume succeeds, giving us a way into the history of poetry, along with an excellent anthology as a starting point for a deeper exploration of the glories of the genre. --Doug Thorpe

From Library Journal
If example is the best teacher, than students new to traditional poetic forms can learn much from this collection of villanelles, sestinas, sonnets, elegies, pastorals, ballads, pantoums, odes, and other familiar structures that have shaped English poetry since Beowulf. Each chapter focuses on a single form, but explanatory material is kept to a minimum: a concise list of formal characteristics, a summary history, a short discussion of the form's contemporary context, and a brief "close up" on an individual poem. Most useful are the selections themselves, which illustrate how particular forms have been employed over time, from canonical classics by Chaucer, Shelley, and Elizabeth Bishop through newer pieces by Hayden Carruth, Michael Palmer, and Thylias Moss. The concluding section on open forms seems somewhat uncertain and conservative, barely straying from much of what precedes it, but that's to be expected given the tastes of the editors, each of whom provides a lively and personal introductory essay that young poets should find quite instructive.DFred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib. Ithaca, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
A marvelous new anthology. -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Concise, learned, revisionary... should enrich the passionate conversation about poetic forms for years to come. -- Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry

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Customer Reviews

Plenty of poems-very little instruction
If you are looking for teaching on the mechanics of different forms this book is about fives pages from being a door stop. Don't waste your money.

If all you need are examples of the different forms this is your book.

A Good Intro
This was a good introduction to poetic forms, giving clear definitions of villanelles, sestinas, sonnets, etc. As a matter of personal choice, I found some of the poems not particularly apt for the poetic form they were trying to define: why was Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" in the "Pastoral" chapter and not the "Ode" chapter? The editors seemed to make arbitrary choices that were sometimes off-kilter. Otherwise, the selection of poems was quite good. As for the complaints about Eurocentrism...let's be honest if not politically correct: nearly all poetic forms in classical poetry were created by Eurocentrist poets. And this book is about classical forms of poetry and how contemporary and modern poets adapted to those forms.

for high school
While objections might be appropriate for high-end poets and advanced university students, I have found this book quite helpful at an introductory high school level. It is short and to the point, and does not overly discourage a young student trying to become acquainted with traditional poetic forms.