A best-selling introduction to poetry for more than fifty years, PERRINE'S SOUND AND SENSE: AN INTRODUCTION TO POETRY succinctly covers the basics of poetry with detailed chapters on the elements of poetry, unique chapters on evaluating poetry, exemplary selections, and exercises and study questions that invite students into careful study. Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson have assiduously continued the Perrine tradition over several recent editions. Every chapter introduction in this compact and concise anthology bears the mark of Laurence Perrine's crisp, clean, and descriptive prose, and every poem selected as an example is not only a perfect illustration of the concept at hand but also a remarkable work in its own right.
There's no better way for you to learn about poetry and understand its elements than with PERRINE'S SOUND AND SENSE. Both a concise introduction to poetry and an anthology, this classic best-seller succinctly covers the basics of poetry with chapters on evaluating poetry, exemplary poetry selections that you'll enjoy reading, and exercises that help you understand each selection. Every poem included in this collection is not only a perfect illustration of the poetic concept at hand, but a remarkable work in its own right.
Thomas R. Arp received a B.A. in English from the University of Michigan (1954) and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to Stanford University. In 1955-1956, he produced educational television for the University of Michigan. He received an M.A. from Stanford University in 1960 and a Ph.D. from Stanford in 1962. He has taught at Bowdoin College, Princeton University, University of California at Berkeley, Hull University (England), and Southern Methodist University. Macmillan published his volume, THE FORM OF POETRY, in 1966, and he received a Fulbright lectureship at University of Bucharest (Romania) in 1969-1970. Arp joined Laurence Perrine in preparing revised editions of SOUND AND SENSE, STORY AND STRUCTURE, and LITERATURE: STRUCTURE, SOUND, AND SENSE beginning in 1982. He became sole author of the books in 1997, and was joined by Greg Johnson in 2002. Greg Johnson received an M.A. in English from Southern Methodist University and a Ph.D. in English from Emory University. Dr. Johnson is the author of books of fiction, poetry, criticism, and biography, including the recent story collections, LAST ENCOUNTER WITH THE ENEMY (Johns Hopkins, 2004) and WOMEN I'VE KNOWN: NEW AND SELECTED STORIES (Ontario Review, 2007), the novel STICKY KISSES (Alyson Books, 2001), and two books on Joyce Carol Oates: INVISIBLE WRITER: A BIOGRAPHY OF JOYCE CAROL OATES (Plume, 1999), and JOYCE CAROL OATES: CONVERSATIONS 1970-2006 (Ontario Review, 2006). He joined the author team of PERRINE'S LITERATURE in 2002.
Part One: THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY. 1. WHAT IS POETRY? Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Eagle." William Shakespeare, "Winter." Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est." REVIEWING CHAPTER ONE. UNDERSTANDING AND EVALUATING POETRY. William Shakespeare, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day." Robert Hayden, "The Whipping." Emily Dickinson, "The last Night that She lived." Gwendolyn Brooks, "The Bean Eaters." Dudley Randall, "Ballad of Birmingham." William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow." Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Constantly risking absurdity." Langston Hughes, "Suicide's Note." A. E. Housman, "Terence, this is stupid stuff." Sir Philip Sidney, "Loving in truth." Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica." Suggestions for Writing. 2. READING THE POEM. Thomas Hardy, "The Man He Killed." Philip Larkin, "A Study of Reading Habits." A. E. Housman, "Is my team plowing." REVIEWING CHAPTER TWO. John Donne, "Break of Day." Emily Dickinson, "There's been a Death, in the Opposite House." Ted Hughes, "Hawk Roosting." Mari Evans, "When in Rome." Sylvia Plath, "Mirror." Thomas Hardy, "The Ruined Maid." Linda Pastan, "Ethics." Adrienne Rich, "Storm Warnings." Suggestions for Writing. 3. DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION. Emily Dickinson, "There is no Frigate like a Book." William Shakespeare, "When my love swears that she is made of truth." Ellen Kay, "Pathedy of Manners." EXERCISES. REVIEWING CHAPTER THREE. Henry Reed, "Naming of Parts." Langston Hughes, "Cross." William Wordsworth, "The world is too much with us." Robert Frost, "Desert Places." Mary Oliver, "Spring in the Classroom." John Donne, "A Hymn to God the Father." Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art." Sharon Olds, "35/10." Miller Williams, "My Wife Reads the Paper at Breakfast on the Birthday of the Scottish Poet." Suggestions for Writing. 4. IMAGERY. Robert Browning, "Meeting at Night." Robert Browning, "Parting at Morning." EXERCISES. REVIEWING CHAPTER FOUR. Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring." William Carlos Williams, "The Widow's Lament in Springtime." Emily Dickinson, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain." Adrienne Rich, "Living in Sin." Seamus Heaney, "The Forge." Robert Frost, "After Apple-Picking." Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays." Jane Flanders, "Shopping in Tuckahoe." Seamus Heaney, "An August Night." Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man." John Keats, "To Autumn." Suggestions for Writing. 5. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE I: SIMILE, METAPHOR, PERSONIFICATION, APOSTROPHE, METONYMY. Langston Hughes, "Harlem" (previously called "Dream Deferred"). Robert Frost, "Bereft." Emily Dickinson, "It sifts from Leaden Sieves." Anne Bradstreet, "The Author to Her Book." John Keats, "Bright Star." EXERCISE. REVIEWING CHAPTER FIVE. Richard Wilbur, "Mind." Emily Dickinson, "I taste a liquor never brewed." Sylvia Plath, "Metaphors." Philip Larkin, "Toads." Mary Oliver, "Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957." Theodore Roethke, "The Sloth." John Donne, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning." Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress." Billy Collins, "Introduction to Poetry." Suggestions for Writing. 6. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE 2: SYMBOL, ALLEGORY. Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken." Walt Whitman, "A Noiseless Patient Spider." William Blake, "The Sick Rose." Seamus Heaney, "Digging." Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." George Herbert, "Peace." EXERCISES. REVIEWING CHAPTER SIX. Richard Wilbur, "The Writer." Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice." Christina Rossetti, "Up-Hill." Robert Phillips, Running on Empty." Mary Oliver, "The Truro Bear." Emily Dickinson, "Because I could not stop for Death." John Donne, "Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness." Billy Collins, "Weighing the Dog." Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses." Suggestions for Writing. 7. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE 3: PARADOX, OVERSTATEMENT, UNDERSTATEMENT, IRONY. Emily Dickinson, "Much Madness is divinest Sense." John Donne, "The Sun Rising." Countee Cullen, "Incident." Marge Piercy, "Barbie Doll." William Blake, "The Chimney Sweeper." Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias." EXERCISE. REVIEWING CHAPTER SEVEN. William Wordsworth, "A slumber did my spirit seal." John Donne, "Batter my heart, three-personed God." Elizavetta Ritchie, "Sorting Laundry." Billy Collins, "The History Teacher." Seamus Heaney, "Mid-Term Break." Mary Oliver, "A Bitterness." W. H. Auden, "The Unknown Citizen." Lucille Clifton, "in the inner city." Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess." Suggestions for Writing. 8. ALLUSION. Robert Frost, "Out, Out --." William Shakespeare, from Macbeth ("She should have died hereafter"). REVIEWING CHAPTER EIGHT. Mary Oliver, "Lilies." e. e. cummings, "in Just-." John Milton, "On His Blindness." Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Miniver Cheevy." Sharon Olds, "My Son the Man." Margaret Atwood, "Siren Song." T. S. Eliot, "Journey of the Magi." William Butler Yeats, "Leda and the Swan." Suggestions for Writing. 9. MEANING AND IDEA. Anonymous, "Little Jack Horner." A. E. Housman, "Loveliest of Trees." Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." REVIEWING CHAPTER NINE. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Rhodora: On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?" Robert Frost, "Design." Emily Dickinson, "I never saw a Moor." Emily Dickinson, "'Faith' is a fine invention." e. e. cummings, "O sweet spontaneous." Walt Whitman, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." John Keats, "On the Sonnet." Billy Collins, "Sonnet." Natasha Tretheway, "Southern History." Rita Dove, "Kentucky, 1833." William Blake, "The Lamb." William Blake, "The Tiger." Suggestions for Writing. 10. TONE. Denise Levertov, "To the Snake." Emily Dickinson, "A narrow Fellow in the Grass." Michael Drayton, "Since there's no help." Billy Collins, "Picnic, Lightning." REVIEWING CHAPTER TEN. William Shakespeare, "My mistress' eyes." Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Crossing the Bar." Thomas Hardy, "The Oxen." Emily Dickinson, "One dignity delays for all." Emily Dickinson, "'Twas warm - at first - like Us." John Donne, "The Apparition." John Donne, "The Flea." Richard Eberhart, "For a Lamb." Mary Oliver, "The Rabbit." Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach." Philip Larkin, "Church Going." Suggestions for Writing. 11. MUSICAL DEVICES. Ogden Nash, "The Turtle." W. H. Auden, "That night when joy began." Theodore Roethke, "The Waking." Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur." EXERCISE. REVIEWING CHAPTER ELEVEN. William Shakespeare, "Blow, blow, thou winter wind." Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool." Maya Angelou, "Woman Work." Sharon Olds, "Rite of Passage." Emily Dickinson, "As imperceptibly as Grief." Mary Oliver, "Music Lessons." William Stafford, "Traveling through the dark." Maura Stanton, "Song (After Shakespeare)." Robert Frost, "Nothing Gold Can Stay." Suggestions for Writing. 12. RHYTHM AND METER. George Herbert, "Virtue." EXERCISES. REVIEWING CHAPTER TWELVE. William Blake, "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence. Walt Whitman, "Had I the Choice." Robert Frost, "The Aim Was Song." George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Stanzas." Sylvia Plath, "Old Ladies' Home." Maya Angelou, "Africa." Linda Pastan, "To a Daughter Leaving Home." Robert Browning, "Porphyria's Lover." Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Break, break, break." Suggestions for Writing. 13. SOUND AND MEANING. Anonymous, "Pease Porridge Hot." A. E. Housman, "Eight O'Clock." Alexander Pope, "Sound and Sense." Emily Dickinson, "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died." EXERCISE. REVIEWING CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Wilfred Owen, "Anthem for Doomed Youth." Margaret Atwood, "Landcrab." Pattiann Rogers, "Night and the Creation of Geography." Maxine Kumin, "The Sound of Night." Adrienne Rich, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers." Galway Kinnell, "Blackberry Eating." Janet Lewis, "Remembered Morning." William Carlos Williams, "The Dance." Suggestions for Writing. 14. PATTERN. George Herbert, "The Pulley." John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." William Shakespeare, "That time of year." Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." EXERCISES. REVIEWING CHAPTER FOURTEEN. William Shakespeare, "From Romeo and Juliet." John Donne, "Death, be not proud." William Butler Yeats, "The Folly of Being Comforted." Claude McKay, "The White City." Claude McKay, "America." Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask." Robert Frost, "Acquainted with the Night." Seamus Heaney, "Villanelle for an Anniversary." Edwin Arlington Robinson, "The House on the Hill." Robert Herrick, "Delight in Disorder." Ben Jonson, "Still to be neat." Suggestions for Writing. 15. EVALUATING POETRY I: SENTIMENTAL, RHETORICAL, DIDACTIC VERSE. Reviewing Chapter Fifteen. Anonymous, "God's Will for You and Me." Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Pied Beauty." William Blake, "A Poison Tree." Granfield Kleiser, "The Most Vital Thing in Life." George Cabot Lodge, "Lower New York: At Dawn." William Wordsworth, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge." D. H. Lawrence, "Piano." James Whitcomb Riley, "The Days Gone By." Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "The Engine." Emily Dickinson, "I like to see it lap the Miles." John Keats, "When I have fears that I may cease to be." John Keats, "O Solitude!" Suggestions for Writing, 16, EVALUATING POETRY 2: POETIC EXCELLENCE. John Donne, "The Canonization." John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Emily Dickinson, "There's a certain Slant of light." Robert Frost, "Home Burial." T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning." Langston Hughes, "The Weary Blues." Elizabeth Bishop, "The Fish." FEATURED POETS. Emily Dickinson. "A Light exists in Spring." "A narrow Fellow in the Grass." "Apparently with no surprise." "As imperceptibly as Grief." "Because I could not stop for Death." "'Faith' is a fine invention." "I died for Beauty--but was scarce." "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain." "I heard a Fly buzz--when I died." "I like a look of Agony." "I like to see it lap the Miles." "I never saw a Moor." "I taste a liquor never brewed." "It sifts from Leaden Sieves." 'Much Madness is divinest Sense." "One dignity delays for all." "The last Night that She lived." "There is no Frigate like a Book." "There's a certain Slant of light." "There's been a Death, in the Opposite House." "'Twas warm--at first--like Us." John Donne. "A Hymn to God the Father." "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." "At the round earth's imagined corners." Batter my heart, three personed God." Break of Day." Death, be not proud." Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness." Song: Go and catch a falling star." The Apparition." The Canonization." The Flea." The Good-Morrow." The Indifferent." The Sun Rising." Robert Frost. "Acquainted with the Night." "After Apple-Picking." "Bereft." "Birches." "Desert Places." "Design." "Fire and Ice." "Home Burial." "Mending Wall." "Nothing Gold Can Stay." "'Out, Out--.'" "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." "The Aim Was Song." "The Road Not Taken." Contemporary Collection. Billy Collins. "Introduction to Poetry." "Oh, My God." "Picnic, Lightning." "Sonnet." "The Golden Years." "The History Teacher." "Weighing the Dog." Seamus Heaney. "An August Night." "Digging." "Follower." "Mid-Term Break." "The Forge." "Villanelle for an Anniversary." Sharon Olds. "I Go Back to May 1937." "My Son the Man." "Rite of Passage." "The Planned Child." "The Victims." "35/10." Mary Oliver. "A Bitterness." "Lilies." "Music Lessons." "Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957." "Spring in the Classroom." "The Black Snake." "The Rabbit." Part Two: WRITING ABOUT POETRY. 1. Why Write about Literature? 2. For Whom Do You Write? 3. Two Basic Approaches. Explication. Analysis. 4. Choosing a Topic. Papers That Focus on a Single Poem. Papers of Comparison and Contrast. Papers on a Number of Poems by a Single Author. Papers on a Number of Poems with Some Feature Other than Authorship in Common. 5. Proving Your Point. 6. Writing the Paper. 7. Introducing Quotations (Q1-Q11). 8. Documentation. Textual Documentation (TD1-TD5). Parenthetical Documentation (PD1-PD6). Documentation by Works Cited. Documentation of Electronic Sources. 9. Stance and Style (S1-S6). 10. Grammar, Punctuation, and Usage: Common Problems. Grammar (G1-G2). Punctuation (P1-P5). Usage (U1-U2). 11. Writing Samples. Explication: "A Study of Reading Habits." Analysis: Diction in "Pathedy of Manners." Part Three: POEMS FOR FURTHER READING. Kim Addonizio, "Sonnenizio on a Line from Drayton." Nathalie Anderson, "The Miser." W. H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts." Jimmy Santiago Baca, "Main Character." Aphra Behn, "On Her Loving Two Equally." D. C. Berry, "On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High." Elizabeth Bishop, "Manners." Gwendolyn Brooks, "a song in the front yard." Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Grief." Amy Clampitt, "Witness." Lucille Clifton, "good times." Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan." Billy Collins, "The Golden Years." Billy Collins, "Oh, My God!" Stephen Crane, "War Is Kind." e. e. cummings, "Buffalo Bill's defunct." e. e. cummings, "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls." e. e. cummings, "Spring is like a perhaps hand." Emily Dickinson, "A Light exists in Spring." Emily Dickinson, "Apparently with no surprise." Emily Dickinson, "I died for Beauty-but was scarce." Emily Dickinson, "I like a look of Agony." John Donne, "At the round earth's imagined corners." John Donne, "The Good-Morrow." John Donne, "The Indifferent." John Donne, "Song: Go and catch a falling star." Rita Dove, "Persephone, Falling." Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Sympathy." Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Christ climbed down." Carolyn Forche, "The Colonel." Robert Frost, "Birches." Robert Frost, "Mending Wall." Allen Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California." Thom Gunn, "From the Wave." R. S. Gwynn, "Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins." Thomas Hardy, "'Ah, are you digging on my grave?'" Thomas Hardy, "Channel Firing." Thomas Hardy, "The Subalterns." Seamus Heaney, "Follower." George Herbert, "Love." A. E. Housman, "To an Athlete Dying Young." Langston Hughes, "Aunt Sue's Stories." Langston Hughes, "Mother to Son." Langston Hughes, "Negro Servant." Langston Hughes, "Theme for English B." Randall Jarrell, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner." Ben Jonson, "Oh, that joy so soon should waste." Ben Jonson, "To Celia." Jenny Joseph, "Warning." John Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci." John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale." Philip Larkin, "Aubade." Audre Lorde, "Black Mother Woman." Marianne Moore, "Silence." Pat Mora, "Immigrants." Sharon Olds, "I Go Back to May 1937." Sharon Olds, "The Planned Child." Sharon Olds, "The Victims." Mary Oliver, "The Black Snake." Dorothy Parker, "Resume." Linda Pastan, "I am learning to abandon the world." Marge Piercy, "Sentimental Poem." Marge Piercy, "A Work of Artifice." Sylvia Plath, "Mad Girl's Love Song." Sylvia Plath, "Spinster." Sylvia Plath, "Wuthering Heights." Ezra Pound, "Salutation." Adrienne Rich, "Poetry: 1." Edwin Arlington Robinson, "The Mill." Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Mr. Flood's Party." Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Richard Cory." Theodore Roethke, "I knew a woman." Theodore Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz." Christina Rossetti, "Song." Michael Ryan, "Letter from an Institution." Anne Sexton, "Young." William Shakespeare, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds." Gary Short, "Stick Figure." Charles Simic, "Evening Walk." Charles Simic, "Grayheaded Schoolchildren." David R. Slavitt, "Raptures." Stevie Smith, "Not Waving but Drowning." Gary Soto, "Small Town with One Road." Edmund Spenser, "One day I wrote her name upon the strand." Wallace Stevens, "Anecdote of the Jar." Wallace Stevens, "The Death of a Soldier." Wallace Stevens, "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock." Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Oak." Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill." John Updike, "Ex-Basketball Player." Mona Van Duyn, "In Bed with a Book." David Wagoner, "Return to the Swamp." Walt Whitman, "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim." Walt Whitman, "To a Stranger." Walt Whitman, "Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand." William Carlos Williams, "Spring and All." William Wordsworth, "I wandered lonely as a cloud." William Wordsworth, "My heart leaps up when I behold." William Wordsworth, "The Solitary Reaper." William Butler Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium." William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming." William Butler Yeats, "The Wild Swans at Coole." GLOSSARY AND INDEX OF LITERARY TERMS.