Eavan BolandThe Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms

This is a good analysis of the various poetic forms such as the sestina, the sonnet, and the villanelle. I was assigned this book for a writing class and I have to say it was a good choice. It covers the forms thoroughly, explains some of the pitfalls of each, and then provides excellent examples.Anyone studying to become a poet would benefit from this book.

Such a great reading/learning experience. Beautiful book.

loved that you had it in stock and got it to me quickly

Much of my reading this period has been that of actual poetry. From this beginning introduction to the reach and range of voice in poems I have entered a boundary-less and fantastical world. A world of structure, no structure, metaphor, rhythm, sometimes rhyme, line lengths, space, beginnings, and endings. Reading the work of other poets has been an education for me in the unlimited possibilities in the use of language.I have also consumed books on the meaning of poetry, the place of poetry in time and culture, the evolution of styles, poetry as a digital entity, and various views on what is and is not a poem. These often set foot into the realm of theory, of strict definition, of world views as technical or humanist. I found C.P. Snow’s premise of there being two basic cultures, one technical/rational, the other humanist/emotional, fascinating. His placement of poetry in the technical/rational camp was a surprise to me (more on this later in the semester). I have read about what poetry ‘should’ consist of and about the eternal vitality and power of words.What made The Making of a Poem stand out for me was its insistent assertion that poetry itself, requires formal practice. The authors hold firm their assertion that while talent is a basic requirement for a poet, “curiosity, determination, and the willingness to learn from others” (p. xi) must also be cultivated. They present a book which offers exercise after exercise for the poet to develop both a practice and a voice for their work.Behn and Twitchell divided their book into seven sections. Each section delineated a specific theme and within the sections are exercises and reflections on meaning. The authors state that “Poetry, like any art, required practice.” They go on to say that:Good exercises are provocative, challenging, and often entertaining. A good exercise will engage you on at least several levels, and should necessitate the breaking of new ground. (p. xiii)I initially approached their premise with moderate skepticism, reading into the title a “Poetry for Dummies” approach to the art. I was dubious of the value of a trial and error, cookbook approach to writing a poem. My exalted view of poetry excluded any interest in considering banal exercises as a necessary component of being a poet. Yet this book consists of exercise after exercise created by a range of respected poets who have used variants of these in their teaching of poetry. As Behn and Twichell clearly state in their introduction:The aspiring poet must apprentice him or herself, must master the elements of language, the complexities of form and its relation to subject, the feel of the line, the image, the play of sound, that makes it possible to respond in a voice with subtlety and range where he hears music in his inner ear, or she sees in the world that image that’s the spark of a poem (p. xi).The sections of the book are grouped based on the area of inquiry, as opposed to level of poetic expertise. This approach enables poets at any level of experience to pick and choose their own level of interest and/or difficulty. I found Part 1 “Ladders to the Dark” to be very useful in its approaches and prompts to just getting ink to page. Other sections consisted of attention to objects, aspects of voice, making use of the intuitive and the non-rational mind, structural possibilities, experimentation with rhyme, lineation, and rhythm, and finally, Part 7 “Major and Minor Surgery.”Entering into the spirit of the book, I began to leaf through its many exercises and try them out for myself. The remainder of this paper will focus on some examples I worked on and my assessment of the ‘practice’ of poetry writing.Part 1 “Ladders to the Dark,” focuses on the importance of mining the unconscious for material. Rita Dove offers “the ten-minute spill” where the writer creates a 10-line poem which must include a proverb or adage, and use 5 of the 8 words she supplies for the student (cliff, needle, voice, whir, blackberry, cloud, mother, lick).To know oneIt takes oneMotherHanging on a cliffThe needle whir of cloud voicesUrgentCompelling meTo be oneTo hide oneTo find oneIn Part 2, “The Things of the World,” attention is focused on the object itself. How to approach the object, personify (or not) it, how to make it concrete or illusive, strange or familiar. One exercise here was to write a poem that is merely a list of things: One quail in a bevy of quails One swan in a lamentation of swans One kangaroo in a troop of kangaroosOne strumpet in a fanfare of strumpetsOne patient in a virtue of patientsA bloat of hippotamiA fluther of jellyfishAn exhaltation of larksOut of these, the world is born.Another exercise was to remember a person you know well and describe the person’s hands. Here the object was to explore unique ways to view a common thing or experience which gives a sense of character to that thing.Utile and strongDigits not yet frozen by arthritisSkin not yet spotted by ageVeins, pronouncedKnuckles, tidyHands like breathing tokens of kindness and milkWhile these exercises may seem elementary, they are not easy. Whether the poem is to tell a story, contain a feeling, or describe a mundane object, I realized that thought, syntax, adjectives, and nouns required care and then more care. To have the poem breathe, the words need to resonate and sentences/lines must convey and aspect or feeling of a life. These exercises prompt the exploration of language and sound, thinking about metaphor and repetition. The exercises further create food for thought and for writing especially on days when creativity is skulking on one of Dante’s grim paths.Other exercises in this book included trying out different ‘types’ of poems. Part 6, “Laws of the Wild,” emphasized structure, shape, and organization of the poem. I tried writing a villanelle which was a complicated and frustrating task. I found it very difficult to fit words to line numbers, rhyme pattern, and repetition. I wonder why Dylan Thomas chose this form.

see above

I absolutely love this book. It is so beautifully organized and every form is well explained and broken down for anyone to understand. One of my best poetry book buys. I will note that this book does not address the basics though, such as meter, syllablic stress, rhyme scheme, internal rhyme, etc. (it does assume you know them). Great for an intermediate poet looking to put their basic knowledge to the test and learn how to use it to create various forms of poetry.

Must have for any poets or lover of poetry. I really enjoy the poems in this book.

Little more than a good collection of poems, comments and descriptions are scarce . Most poems can be found online anyway,

Please get this author to write more

Good !

Purchased as a university text. Informative.

J'aime beaucoup ce livre, je l'ai utilisé pour réviser mes partiels de littérature anglaise et franchement il m'a bien servi! Je recommande! :)

First, the good news! - This book is an absolute must-have. It's well-written, clear, entertaining, educated, and manages to avoid being patronising while still managing to be both satisfyingly clever and thankfully simple.Anybody wanting to own a concise volume of poetic forms and techniques would do well to invest in this book. It covers the basics of some of the more interesting poetic forms and does it in a way that's easy to understand. Example (from page 5):-THE VILLANELLE AT A GLANCE:1) It is a poem of nineteen lines.2) It has five stanzas, each of three lines, with a final one of four lines.3) The first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas.4) ...etc etcIt then goes on to give the history of the form, its place in the modern context, and finally a close-up of one of the leading exponents. In between all this brilliantness it regales the reader with cracking examples of some of the classics of the genre (staying with the Villanelle, it gives us Downson's "Villanelle of His Lady's Treasures", Dylan Thomas's breathtaking "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", and Wendy Cope's "Reading Scheme", among others). An absolute treasure-trove!The forms it covers are:The villanelle;The sestina;The pantoum;The sonnet;The ballad;Blank verse;The heroic couplet; andThe stanza.It also spends time on the elegy, the pastoral and the ode. During all this the authors still manage to find the time somehow to open the readers' eyes and introduce me, at least, to some true literary gems I'd never seen, such as Anthony Hecht's "The Book of Yolek", Miller Williams' "The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina" and (I'm almost ashamed I didn't know these) Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why".As a surprisingly powerful extra, the authors add their own personal stories to their journeys in poetry to bring these possibly abstract structures to life.But there is some (slightly) bad news. After the first few chapters, the authors either lose the motivation or the scope to closely analyse the poetic forms: we're treated to logical breakdowns of the villanelle, the sestina and the sonnet, for instance, but rather less in the way of the same by the time we get to the stanza. This may be because the stanza is not so rigorously constructed as the villanelle, but this in itself brings me to the next 'criticism'...Thorough and far-reaching as this book is, it's by no means exhaustive, which makes the difficulties of rigorously analysing a stanza to the same degree as the villanelle all the more glaring. Why not, after all, stick with those forms that can be so analysed, such as the haiku, the acrostic or the dansa?But this isn't so much the book's problem, more perhaps its genius - it simply leaves me wanting more, and frustrated that the chapters don't go on forever. Perhaps there will some day be a Part Two?...This is a wonderful book. Learned, entertaining, and packed with both insight and argument, all crammed in between some of the greatest poems of the English language. To be thoroughly recommended!