In A Poet's Guide to Poetry, Mary Kinzie brings her decades of
expertise as poet, critic, and director of the creative writing program
at Northwestern University to bear in a comprehensive reference work for
any writer wishing to better understand poetry. Detailing the formal
concepts of poetry and methods of poetic analysis, she shows how the
craft of writing can guide the art of reading poems. Using examples from
the major traditions of lyric and meditative poetry in English from the
medieval period to the present, Kinzie considers the sounds and rhythms
of poetry along with the ideas and thought-units within poems. Kinzie
also shares her own successful classroom tactics that encourage readers
to approach a poem as if it were provisional.
The three parts of A Poet's Guide to Poetry lead the reader through a
carefully planned introduction to the ways we understand poetry. The
first section provides careful, step-by-step instruction to familiarize
students with the formal elements of poems, from the most obvious
feature through the most subtle. The second part carefully examines
meter and rhythm, as well as providing a theoretical and practical
overview of free verse. The final section offers helpful chapters on
writing in form. Rounding out the volume are writing exercises for
beginning and advanced writers, a dictionary of poetic terms, and a
bibliography of further reading.
For this new edition, Kinzie has carefully reworked the introductory
material and first chapter, as well as amended the annotated
bibliography to include the most recent works of criticism. The updated
guide also contains revised exercises and adjustments throughout the
text to make the work as lucid and accessible as possible.
