OVERVIEWS AND INTRODUCTIONS

Paul Fussell., Poetic Meter and Poetic Form

Still a classic. A great overview including an unirvalled discussion of the effects of various expressive variations

Stephen Fry, The Ode Less-Travelled

Extremely user-friendly, practical, and unintimidated by the subject as only the British can be  Nuts and bolts of

meter only; no high poetry here. Lots of hands-on exercises. Highly recommended for beginners. Slight sexism alert.

Mary Oliver, Rules of the Dance

A surprisingly useful book on the basics of meter from a poet who doesn't publish in meter.  A useful supplement.

MORE IN-DEPTH

James MacAuley, Versification

Out of print, but worth finding a copy.  A literate and refreshing discussion of some of the more challenging issues in

prosody, this book is a gem.  I am personally campaigning to have it reprinted: interested publishers please contact me.

John Thompson, The Founding of English Meter

A gripping and moving account of how ouc current metrical system developed during the Renaissance.  This book will

deepen your awareness of the unique and breathtaking power of English meter.  It is one of my all-time favorites, and

helped me envision how to write a readable book on prosody when I was starting on The Ghost of Meter.

Derek Attridge, Well-Weighed Syllables: Elizabethan Verse in Classical Meters

Though Attridge is best known now for his footless prosodic system (which I personally find very useful for scanning

accentual-based verse but inadequate to accentual-syllabic prosody), I suspect that this book may turn out to represent his

most important contribution to prosody, foucsing as it does on a little-understood and fascinating moment in prosodic history: 

e experimentation with quantitative meter by Spenser and others during the Renaissance and its impact on English meter.

HANDBOOKS

Babette Deutsch, Poetry Handbook

This book has a wonderful quality. I grew up with it and still treasure it today.

Miller Williams, Patterns of Poetry

Direct and clear, yet thorough.  Includes exasmples of the forms, which is very useful.

Lewis Turco, The New Book of Forms

The classic, and a must for every shelf.  Opinionated, sometimes to the point of being turgid, but comprehensive in its

range of forms.  Especially good on Celtic forms.

Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, coeditors, An Exaltation of Forms

This book is not really by me, nor by Kathrine, but by 60 contemporary poets (each of whom chose a favorite form to

introduce, along with several examples), so I take the liberty to include it here. EOF includes comprehensive sections on

many meters and forms that are not covered in depth, it at all, anywhere else on this list. These include hip-hop, blues, rap,

pantoum, ghazal, Oulipian forms, procedural poetics, experimental and invented forms, and a variety of meters including

trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, and hendecasyllabic, as well as the more familiar forms (sonnet, sestina, villanelle, etc..). 

ONE-OF-A-KIND

John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason

The beloved show-and-tell of forms, with really beautiful examples of each one.  I was John's undergraduate student as he was putting this book

together, and he used to share the examples with us.  Delightfully slim, this book may well be immortal in the world of English prosody. 

Timothy Steele, All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing

A remarkable tour-de-force, this book consists mainly of an encyclopedic and eloquent tribute to iambic pentameter in its many, many,

guises, by its most fervent contemporary acolyte.

Copyright©2006 Annie Finch