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Blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, has been central to English poetry since the Renaissance. It is the basic vehicle of Shakespeare's plays and the form in which Milton chose to write Paradise Lost. Milton associated it with freedom, and the Romantics, connecting it in turn with freethinking, used it to explore change and confront modernity, sometimes in unexpectedly radical ways. Henry Weinfield's detailed readings of the masterpieces of English blank verse focus on Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson and Stevens. He traces the philosophical and psychological struggles underlying these poets' choice of form and genre, and the extent to which their work is marked, consciously or not, by the influence of other poets. Unusually attuned to echoes between poems, this study sheds new light on how important poetic texts, most of which are central to the literary canon, unfold as works of art.

Blank verse, English --- English literature --- English blank verse --- English poetry --- History and criticism. --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature

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English language --- Blank verse --- English drama --- Anglais (Langue) --- Théâtre anglais --- Versification --- History and criticism --- Histoire et critique

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Poetry has been around for nearly five millennia, yet never has it been more puzzling. Technology, social media, and the blinding pace of contemporary life leave many students and readers in the dark. Just in time, this book comes to the rescue not just with a response to the problem of understanding and enjoying poetry, but it offers a solution. A widely published writer and poet, the author takes the mystery and madness out of verse with specific strategies designed to tame the poetic wilderness-not by dumbing down the poems but by raising the ability of readers to absorb this gem of literary form. Readers of all abilities and sensibilities will profit from the book's ability to drill down to the bedrock of meaning. Valenti mines his decades of experience writing, publishing, and teaching poetry to provide innovative hints, tips, guidelines, and directives that will benefit anyone wishing to cultivate their enjoyment of literature's highest form of expression.

Adverse --- Alison --- blank verse --- Dan Valenti --- Enjoy --- figurative language --- fireworks --- formal verse --- free verse --- hip hop --- How to Read and Enjoy Poetry --- imagery --- Jefferson --- linguistic --- metaphor --- meter --- personification --- poetic forms --- Poetry --- Read --- rhyme --- simile --- symbolism --- the amazing power of words --- utility for thought --- Valenti --- Verse --- Verse or Adverse

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"Intro to Poetry Writing is always like this: a long labor, a breech birth, or, obversely, mining in the dark. You take healthy young Americans used to sunshine (aided sometimes by Xanax and Adderall), you blindfold them and lead them by the hand into a labyrinth made from bones. Then you tell them their assignment: 'Find the Grail. You have a New York minute to get it.'"--The Poetry Lesson The Poetry Lesson is a hilarious account of the first day of a creative writing course taught by a "typical fin-de-siècle salaried beatnik"--one with an antic imagination, an outsized personality and libido, and an endless store of entertaining literary anecdotes, reliable or otherwise. Neither a novel nor a memoir but mimicking aspects of each, The Poetry Lesson is pure Andrei Codrescu: irreverent, unconventional, brilliant, and always funny. Codrescu takes readers into the strange classroom and even stranger mind of a poet and English professor on the eve of retirement as he begins to teach his final semester of Intro to Poetry Writing. As he introduces his students to THE TOOLS OF POETRY (a list that includes a goatskin dream notebook, hypnosis, and cable TV) and THE TEN MUSES OF POETRY (mishearing, misunderstanding, mistranslating . . . ), and assigns each of them a tutelary "Ghost-Companion" poet, the teacher recalls wild tales from his coming of age as a poet in the 1960's and 1970's, even as he speculates about the lives and poetic and sexual potential of his twenty-first-century students. From arguing that Allen Ginsberg wasn't actually gay to telling about the time William Burroughs's funeral procession stopped at McDonald's, The Poetry Lesson is a thoroughly entertaining portrait of an inimitable poet, teacher, and storyteller.

Poets --- Authors --- A Coney Island of the Mind. --- Aldous Huxley. --- Allen Ginsberg. --- Amiri Baraka. --- An Embarrassment of Riches. --- Anna Akhmatova. --- Aphorism. --- Aram Saroyan. --- Arthur Rimbaud. --- Aubade. --- Barney Rosset. --- Beat Generation. --- Bei Dao. --- Bertolt Brecht. --- Black Man. --- Blank verse. --- Boredom. --- Britney Spears. --- Cataclysm (Dragonlance). --- Charles Bukowski. --- Che Guevara. --- Cunt. --- De Profundis (letter). --- Death in Venice. --- Deathbed. --- Edgar Allan Poe. --- Emily Dickinson. --- English muffin. --- Ezra Pound. --- Feral cat. --- Flapper. --- French Colonial. --- French Communist Party. --- From Beyond the Grave. --- Futility (poem). --- Gabriela Mistral. --- Gaggle. --- Gertrude Stein. --- Gregory Corso. --- Guerrilla warfare. --- Guillaume Apollinaire. --- Heir to the Empire. --- Hippie. --- His Family. --- I Wish (manhwa). --- In Another Country. --- Isadora Duncan. --- Jack Kerouac. --- Jacques Maritain. --- James Merrill. --- Jan Hus. --- Jan Kerouac. --- Jim Morrison. --- Joan Vollmer. --- Junkie (novel). --- Kitsch. --- Lawrence Ferlinghetti. --- Libido. --- Lord Byron. --- Marilyn Monroe. --- Max Jacob. --- McSorley's Old Ale House. --- Memoir. --- Mennonite. --- Mexico City Blues. --- Milan Kundera. --- Miroslav Holub. --- Monomania. --- Mr. --- Naked Lunch. --- Nobel Prize. --- Olga Rudge. --- Orgy. --- Patti Smith. --- Pheromone. --- Pocket watch. --- Poet laureate. --- Poetry. --- Pretty Face. --- Pyramid scheme. --- Racism. --- Rant (novel). --- Red Mass. --- Ridicule. --- Shel Silverstein. --- Sodomy. --- Surrealism. --- Take Shelter. --- The New York Times Book Review. --- The Other Hand. --- The Price of Gold. --- The Scary Guy. --- This Country. --- To This Day. --- Tristan Tzara. --- Under the Volcano. --- Wallace Stevens. --- War and War. --- William Saroyan. --- Young Widow.