Synopses & Reviews
Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, All the Funs in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study of versification by one of our best contemporary practitioners of traditional poetic forms. Emphasizing both the coherence and the diversity of English metrical practice from Chaucers time to ours, Timothy Steele explains how poets harmonize the fixed units of meter with the variable flow of idiomatic speech. He examines the ways in which poets have used meter, rhyme, and stanza to communicate and enhance meaning. Steele illuminates as well many practical, theoretical, and historical issues in English prosody, without ever losing sight of the fundamental pleasures, beauties, and insights that fine poems offer us. Written lucidly, with a generous selection of helpful scansions and explanations of the metrical effects of the great poets of the English language, All the Funs in How You Say a Thing is not only a valuable handbook on technique; it is also a wide-ranging study of English verse and a mine of entertaining information for anyone wishing more fully to write, enjoy, understand, or teach poetry.
Synopsis
Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, All the Funs in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study of versification by one of our best contemporary practitioners of traditional poetic forms. Emphasizing both the coherence and the diversity of English metrical practice from Chaucers time to ours, Timothy Steele explains how poets harmonize the fixed units of meter with the variable flow of idiomatic speech. He examines the ways in which poets have used meter, rhyme, and stanza to communicate and enhance meaning. Steele illuminates as well many practical, theoretical, and historical issues in English prosody, without ever losing sight of the fundamental pleasures, beauties, and insights that fine poems offer us. Written lucidly, with a generous selection of helpful scansions and explanations of the metrical effects of the great poets of the English language, All the Funs in How You Say a Thing is not only a valuable handbook on technique; it is also a wide-ranging study of English verse and a mine of entertaining information for anyone wishing more fully to write, enjoy, understand, or teach poetry.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 339-348) and index.
About the Author
Timothy Steele is Professor of English at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the author of Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter. His collections of poetry include The Color Wheel and Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970-1986.
Table of Contents
Metrical norm and rhythmical modulation --Scansion and metrical variation --Additional sources of rhythmical modulation, including enjambment, caesural pause, and word length --The story of elision, including the famous rise, troublesome reign, and tragical fall of the metrical apostrophe --Boundless wealth from a finite store : meter and grammar --Rhyme --Stanzas --Trochaic and trisyllabic meters --Alternative modes of versification in English.