Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse
Book Tracking
Sign up to add this book to your recommneded, reading, or planned reading list.
Book Cover
Paperback
Recommended By
Ten Taxis and Nic Sebastian.
Book Details
Written by Mary Oliver.
Buy this on Amazon
($13.95)
Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance," wrote Alexander Pope. "The dance," in the case of Oliver's brief and luminous book, refers to the interwoven pleasures of sound and sense to be found in some of the most celebrated and beautiful poems in the English language, from Shakespeare to Edna St. Vincent Millay to Robert Frost. With a poet's ear and a poet's grace of expression, Oliver shows what makes a metrical poem work - and enables readers, as only she can, to "enter the thudding deeps and the rippling shallows of sound-pleasure and rhythm-pleasure that intensify both the poem's narrative and its ideas."User Reviews (1) Login or create an account to write a review.
Nic Sebastian thinks this book is Excellent.
No-one can go wrong with Mary Oliver. I read this right after reading her "A Poetry Handbook" at a point when I knew little or nothing about meter. I'm not one of those fortunate types who feel called to write in meter so this was not hugely useful to me from a writing perspective, but it was hugely informative from a reading perspective. It gave me the basic tools to form a baseline reasonable opinion and appreciation of others' attempts to write in meter. I happen at this time to be thinking about taking the plunge into writing meter and will definitely dust this one off and go through it again. Highly recommended.