Are there any poetry books for tecnonerds?
There are a lot of courses and books of the “physics for poets” variety. I am looking for the reverse – a “poetry for engineers and scientists” book.
When I went to college, there was a required one semester English course. Although the school was a general liberal arts university, my class had mainly engineering and science students. The teacher was not the most pleasant of people. She had a slightly contemptuous attitude toward the students and she spoke in some weird psuedo-British accent. However, her poetry analysis was spot on. A poem is one of those things that you may not be able to make sense of on your own, but if the analysis is right, it all comes together.
Are there any poetry books like that. I want a full explanation of how meaning is delivered by rhyme, alliteration and language style. I know this level of detail is like explaining a joke to someone. You lose a lot of the direct impact. Still any explanation is better than being completely bewildered and maybe, after sufficient exposure, you become more sensitized to how poetry works.
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11 Answers
I recommend The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem. It’s fiction but there’s some poetry in it.
I think you might enjoy How Poetry Works. Based on the reviews and comments, it seems to be the just the kind of thing you are looking for.
I would also suggest (because I love all things Stephen Fry) The Ode Less Travelled, which covers the same ground, but from a more personal and humorous perspective.
I linked American editions, but there are alternative editions if you are in a different country.
The perfect book to take you beyond the end rhyme and the doggerel of “I think that i shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree” is Paul Fussell’s Poetic Meter and Poetic Form
MY son introduced me to this book when he was taking a poetry writing workshop at Wesleyan U. This was the textbook. it changed my life and made me both a reader and writer of poetry. The skills I learned have afforded me countless hours of pleasure.
Ignore the price on the link above and use this one if you want to buy a used copy. This gets my primus unter pares award and is considered by many to be the definitive book on poetic. A number of readers said that it changed the way they read and wrote.
I have several similar books in my library, if you want names, but this is by far the best. I still dip into it regulalry.
@gailcalled Paul Fussell! Wonderful, I will take a look at that myself.
@glacial : One look and I predict you will be hooked. it is one of my primary reference books, and I mean books.
I have lost the reference but both Frost and Auden mentioned that they started with meter and form because it was so much more interesting than content.
Auden was always haring off after the elusive amphibrach…a guy after my own heart.
@gailcalled Thanks for the link. The book sounds interesting. I just ordered a copy.
Let me know (two years from now, when you come up for air) what you think.
Of the books suggested, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form and The Ode Less Traveled are available at my local library, providing a try before buy option. I will definitely be examining them.
And FWIW, Paul Fussell is a polymath who has written an award-wiining book about various writers involved in and influenced by World War I that is fascinating. Hardy, Graves, Sassoon, Owens, etc.
“Fussell supplies contexts, both actual and literary, for those writers who most effectively memorialized WWI as an historical experience with conspicuous imaginative and artistic meaning.” (Sorry. I lost the source. It’s from an Amazon reader’s review.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_and_Modern_Memory
@gailcalled That’s the book I know him from – great stuff!
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