How to Read a Poem

An introductory text that is both an anthology of over 200 poems and a comprehensive exploration of the form. Over 100 poets featured; those most widely represented include Blake, Byron, cummings, Dickinson, Donne, Alan Dugan, Frost, Louise Gluck, George Herbert, Keats, Pope, Pound, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Yeats.

1. What Poetry Means
Poems Supplementary to Chapter 1

2. Metaphor
Poems Supplementary to Chapter 2

3. How Poetry Works: Approaches and Techniques
1. Poetic Music
2. Contrast; Balance
3. Precision
4. Obscurity
Poems Supplementary to Chapter 3

What Poetry Uses: Devices
1. Rhyme
2. Alliteration
3. Repetition; Refrain
4. Allusion; Acrostics
5. Imitation; Parody
6. Onomatopoeia

5. Shapes and Structures
1. Couplets; Quatrains
2. Ballads and Hymns
3. Sonnets (Italian, Shakespearian, Spenserian)
4. Songs (Lyrics)
5. Dialogues; Monologues
6. Other Traditional Forms
7. Free Forms
8. Concrete Poetry

6. Metrics
Author Index
Poem Index
Subject Index

Burton Raffel has taught English, Classics, and Comparative Literature at universities in the United States, Israel, and Canada. His books include translations of Beowulf, Horace: Odes, Epodes, Epistles, Satires, The Complete Poetry and Prose of Chairil Anwar, From the Vietnamese, Ten Centuries of Poetry, The Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich, Mandelstram (with Alla Burago), and Poems From the Old English and The Annotated Milton; several critical studies, Introduction to Poetry, How to Read a Poem, The Development of Modern Indonesian Poetry, and The Forked Tounge: A Study of the Translation Process; and Mia Poems, a volume of his own poetry. Mr. Raffel practiced law on Wall Street and taught in the Ford Foundation’s English Language Teacher Training Project in Indonesia.