The Making of a Poem

[lunabee34]

I finally finished The Making of a Poem.

The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by Mark Strand

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a really good overview of British and American poetry. I think it does a good job of breaking down the forms and choosing accessible poems. I don't know if Norton is still publishing this text, but I would definitely consider using it in the classroom.



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Heroic Couplet

evolves out of Chaucer
122 "denoting a high subject matter"
122 "The sharp, end-stop rhymes, the regular stresses, and the pause that happened in the middle of the line all made it perfect for moralizing, warning, satirizing, and poking fun at another's expense"

I enjoyed Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book" and Browning's "The Last Duchess."

The Stanza

140 "where poetry reconnects to song"

I enjoyed Blake's "The Tyger," Byron's "So We'll Go No More A-Roving," Charlotte Mew's "A Quoi Bon Dire," Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays," and Carol Ann Duffy's "Warming Her Pearls."

Oh, man, y'all. "Warming Her Pearls" is so so so hot. It's all about a maid longing for the lady of the house.

The Elegy

I enjoyed Arnold's "Dover Beach" and Mark Doty's "Tiara."

The Pastoral

207 "sought to imitate and celebrate the virtues of rural life"
207 medieval pastoral "poetry in which a perspective of grief and yearning is taken on and rural manners and customs are idealized from the vantage point of a corrupt and treacherous court."
208 "the Industrial Revolution replaced the court as a place from which to mourn for and celebrate moral life"

I enjoyed Mary Oliver's "The Black Walnut Tree."

The Ode

240 "solemn, heroic, and elevated form"
Pindaric = how awesome the subject is, often exaggerated
240 "Romantic movement galvanized it"
240 "became a form that examined and exalted lyric crisis"
240 "straight-faced and unswerving elevations of objects and persons no longer seems possible in an age of lost faith and broken images"

I enjoyed Jo Harjo's "Perhaps the World Ends Here."

Open Forms

I enjoyed Frank O'Hara's "Ave Maria" (very funny) and Sharon Olds's "The Language of the Brag."