A comprehensive collection of poetry terms, John Drury's The Poetry Dictionary is a classic reference for students and teachers alike. With all the terms needed to effectively discuss the craft, this new and revised edition is:
-Value-priced with the same helpful information as the first edition, but now in a more affordable and handy package
-Packed with examples from classic and contemporary poetry to illustrate the terms at work
-Recommended and with a foreword by Dana Gioia, head of the National Endowment for the Arts
Both comprehensive and concise, The Poetry Dictionary is a unique and useful anthology of the art.
John Drury's Poetry Dictionary is no dreary list of defined terms to cram for your poetry final. It's a work of art in itself, written in Drury's engagingly lucid prose, liberally spiced with examples from the world's best poets. Curious about sequence? Drury gives a clear definition of the term, followed by Katha Pollitt's "Vegetable Poems" in sequence 1-5. Forgotten the rules of the villanelle? Drury explains the form, gives a little historic background, and presents examples by Jean Passerat, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Dylan Thomas, Weldon Kees, and James Cummins. Never has a poetry dictionary been so browsable, so erudite, and so engaging. --Stephanie Gold
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
Encourages While Educating Poets:
From Abecedarium (a poem arranged according to the alphabet) to Word (the basic unit of the sentence) The Poetry Dictionary takes us on a journey of discovery. Along the way we encounter such familiar terms as Poem, Carol and Muse and unfamiliar terms like Drottkvaett (an Old Norse stanzaic form) and Synecdoche (a figure of speech in which a part of something indicates the whole). We find old standards penned by the likes of William Shakespeare and Robert Browning but also see lesser-known verse by... more info
Practical and useful:
Drury's book is a practical and useful book for not only the writing poetry, but for teaching poetry. His definitions and examples are practical, clear, and unaffected, unlike some of the other more convoluted handbooks. A definite must have for any poet or teacher of poetry
Essential:
It's comprehensive: soil to sky.
If you require, the how and why.
A fun read, a great resource:
This text is beautifully organized; it's intriguing, and leads the reader on from reference to reference, poem to poem. It's littered with examples and a wide variety of poems, citing old works as well as contemporary reworkings of old forms, Neruda and Keats under Odes, Passerat (16th century) and Weldon Kees (20th century) under Villanelles. Definitions are clear and easy to understand. A fun read, a great resource.
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