The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems

by Frances Mayes

The bestselling author of Under the Tuscan Sun brings poetry
out of the classroom and into the homes of everyday readers.

Before she fell in love with Tuscany, Frances Mayes fell in love with verse. After publishing five books of poetry and teaching creative writing for more than twenty-five years, Mayes is no stranger to the subject. In The Discovery of Poetry, an accessible "field guide" to reading and writing poetry, she shares her passion with readers. Beginning with basic terminology and techniques, from texture and sound to rhyme and repetition, Mayes shows how focusing on one aspect of a poem can help you to better understand, appreciate, and enjoy the reading and writing experience. In addition to many creative and helpful composition ideas, following each lyrical and lively discussion is a thoughtful selection of poems. With its wonderful anthology from Shakespeare to Jamaica Kinkaid, The Discovery of Poetry is an insightful, invaluable guide to what Mayes calls "the natural pleasures of language-a happiness we were born to have."

Genres: Poetry, Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, Textbooks, School, Literary Fiction

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Frances Mayes's new book is See You in the Piazza: New Places to Discover in Italy published by Crown. Her most recent novel is Women in Sunlight, published by Crown and available in paperback in spring 2019. With her husband, Edward Mayes she recently published The Tuscan Sun Cookbook. Every Day in Tuscany is the third volume in her bestselling Tuscany memoir series.

In addition to her Tuscany memoirs, Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany , Frances Mayes is the author of the memoirs Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir; A Year in the World; the illustrated books In Tuscany and Bringing Tuscany Home; Swan, a novel; The Discovery of Poetry, a text for readers; and five books of poetry. She divides her time between homes in Italy and North Carolina.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS BOOK!! It's like a poetry course in your hand!!! I highly recommend it!

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An overview and introduction by a poet and teacher who went on to fame and fortune when she wrote a memoir about her life in Tuscany. I studied the first edition of this book, originally published in the 1980’s, years before anyone had heard of Frances Mayes. I maintain that her writing success is built on her in-depth knowledge of the workings of poetry. The pattern of writing/studying poetry before becoming famous in another genre is fairly common (C.S. Lewis, Shakespeare, Vladimir Nabokov and countless others have gone down this road) which supports the idea that aspiring writers should appreciate, or at least understand the art and craft of making a poem.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the textbook for the workshop I'm taking at the New School. It was hard to keep a straight face while reading a "field guide to poetry" by the lady who wrote Under the Tuscan Sun. But as loopy as the text got, the example poems were a decent mix of old and new that was pleasant to revisit. A decent shelf reference, but not that much fun to read cover-to-cover.

[Bonnie Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this for my fellowship and it depended my appreciation for poetry tenfold - i find myself thinking in poems especially when i am day dreaming. It brought me back to being a kid reading anne of green gables and how i fell in love with the possibility of the written word

[Andrea Lorenz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This would be a stellar book for an intro to poetry class, for the novice who doesn't know much about poetry but wants to learn. There are definitely parts of this book that shine: her discussion of language and the use of words to texturize, or surprise, her advice about interpretation, and the exercises that are scattered throughout the book and gathered together at the end for writing poetry. I found much of the poetry included to be old and overused. As an English major and someone who just likes poetry, I wanted more concrete and contemporary pieces. I was familiar with many of the classic poems from other courses and wasn't super engaged with much of the abstract, philosophical poems. I did take stuff away from this though and think that even an experienced teacher or writer could get something out of it.

[J. Alfred · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best advice I can think of for anyone who wants to be intellectually enthusiastic and enjoy surpries in life is: make an attempt to visit all used book sales you can, and then someday read the books that you purchase there. This is one of those "Oh, I'll get to it one day" buys that does much to stabilize my faith in the 'read whatever interests you' approach to education. This is a sprawling but focused text which does a great job of teaching what is teachable about poetry (it provides the only useful differentiation between Metonymy and Synechdoche that I've ever encountered) while insisting that poetry is mysterious at its roots. This has my wholehearted recommendation to be on your shelves as a private reader, and maybe even more to be a classroom text in any poetry survay.

[Catherine L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, it's sometimes difficult, she's erudite, and forces you to think hard, but oh, what fun when a poem connects and sings in your head, when you get goosebumps from a gorgeous phrase, when you laugh out loud at a cleverness. Everyone should have a copy.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a page or two of this a day off and on for a couple years and I can tell that I get a lot more out of poetry now then I did when I started. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to read this for a course, a prescribed number of pages a week, and to actually do all the suggested exercises and participate in discussions about the poems; I suspect that would be very intense. Somewhere in the middle, though, I got to thinking that I would like to do that some day, take an actual course in poetry. I don't think there is any better recommendation for an introductory textbook than that it inspires me to want to learn more.

I saw that some, mainly English majors, who reviewed the book thought that the poems selected were kind of lame, or cliche or something. The first page of the table of contents lists dusty oldies like Frost "Road Not Taken" (groan) and Gwendolyn Brooks "We Real Cool" (hooray) but I enjoyed coming across poems I already knew about and reading them again with the new tools the book gave me. Anyway, there is a reason certain poems are in all the anthologies. Obviously, a book you choose to read has the advantage over one the teacher assigns even if you would have liked to read it anyway. Somehow a course on poetry, with deadlines and grades, seems counter to what we think poetry is about, at least since the Romantics.

I also liked the way the poems were organized, for example Chapter 2 "Words" which opened with "Jabberwocky," a poem I memorized as a kid, Chapter 3 "Images," and later chapters that look at more specific poetic elements like use of rhyme, meter, specific forms, etc. instead of just going chronologically like another introductory book I have largely ignored because it starts with incomprehensible Old English gibberish.

If you like some poems and want to like them even more and find more poems to like, this is the book.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frances Mayes teaches writing (or at least did some time ago) at San Francisco State University. This is a book on writing poetry that is enjoyable for anyone who enjoys poetry, whether they write it or not.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the textbook in my college poetry writing course...lovely examples of poems and interesting exercises to get the creative juices flowing.

[Nattalia Nealls · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I only owned one book about poetry, this would be it. Frances Mayes taught at the university level for almost 30 years. She knows what she's talking about.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good I want to actually spend money to buy it and keep it for my own.

[Kristen]

It's time to be honest with myself that I'm not finishing this. It's a good introduction to poetry, and I hoped it would inspire me to read more poems. But the main conclusion that I've drawn is that poems are more like music than like novels. You get the most out of them through repetition, and I just don't have time to add a whole new major genre of art to my life right now. Still this is a good reference and has lots of poems to read should the mood ever strike, so I'm glad to have purchased a copy.

[Nathanael S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The information of a textbook, but very readable.

[Kelly Rincon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really enjoyed doing a poetry book club with my mom, using this book to guide us through. I still can't say I'm super into poetry, but I appreciate it a lot more now.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is precisely the sort of book I'd been looking for to help me develop more of an appreciation for poetry. Almost everything I'd been hoping to know more about was here, including how, quite literally, to read a poem. ("[L]et the punctuation mark at the end of the line guide you... If there is no punctuation mark where the line breaks, regard that break as a very slight pause -- a half-comma -- that emphasizes the last word on the line.... [D]on't interrupt your reading of the sentence just because the line stops.")

All the major aspects of poetry are discussed -- the texture and sound of words, imagery, subject, speaker, meter, form, etc. -- with lots of wonderful and evocative poems given as examples and reading exercises. If my description is calling to mind the sort of dry, overly academic poetry textbook that Prof. Keating has his students rip pages out of in Dead Poets' Society, rest assured, this is not that sort of book. It's actually a pleasure to read, with the author sharing her knowledge and love of poetry in a warm, engaging style. Highly recommended. 4.5 stars

[Tracy O · Rating 4 out of 5]

The range of poems in this book - particularly the contemporary poems is SO solid. I love Marin Headlands by Jane Miller. I even love the John Ashberry poem in this book and I truly hate John Ashberry's poems. The choices are just great. Here's a W.S. Merwin poem I really like:

For the Anniversay of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

Anyway, I highly recommend checking this out. It is full of beautiful poems, quotes and pieces of poems - sort of the Joni Mitchell Blue of my poetry collection. A total surprise.

[Shellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard a published novelist once say that she was required to take a poetry class in college and hated it because poetry does not pertain to novels. That's sad. I've also read too many novels lately where a writer tried to create imagery and it was trite, wordy and off-putting. I think all writers should love words; the sounds, rhythms and pictures of words are what takes us to that other world and helps us feel. There is nothing wrong with studying the greats and using regular exercises to perfect the craft.
This Field Guide delivers exactly what it promises: exposure to great poetry, poetic terminology, tricks, trends and tools as well as ideas to try in your own poetry notebook. In my novice efforts at writing poetry I've gone quickly to that place of flow that I shoot for when writing prose. I was left with a deeper appreciation of the process and a long list of homework assignments that I intend to complete.

[Tandava Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine way to spend some time thinking about poetry with the author. Though I would have preferred more poems with commentary and fewer poems simply printed out at the ends of chapters as additional examples. I'm awfully picky about poetry, and so when faced with a large set of poems I pretty quickly just start cutting out the ones I don't enjoy and not considering them in terms of the actual theme of the chapter. And some were just excessive -- like all 16 pages of The Eve of St. Agnes. Sheesh. I was also not super thrilled by the portions about writing (as opposed to reading), though the list of exercises in the last chapter could be handy. Still, overall it was perfectly serviceable in terms of getting me warmed up for NaPoWriMo next month.

[Literary Mama]

Frances Mayes was one of my undergraduate professors, and her The Discovery of Poetry is a classic. Covering everything from 'The Origin of a Poem,' to how to interpret and write about poetry, Mayes includes a Poet’s Handbook with suggestions for writing, revising, and publishing. Her friendly tone conveys passion for her subject, as in this line comparing metaphor to Roman augury, 'the root that says unlike things have mysterious, informing links which we can discover.' Educational passages are buoyed by a good selection of relatively diverse, canonical poems.

For more recommendations on craft books, visit Literary Mama's Essential Reading List for September: http://www.literarymama.com/litreflec...

[Philip Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the text used in my first year poetry course at Vancouver Island University. It's a wonderfully structured book with great examples, a wide-breadth of subject matter and voices, engaging instructive style, and some very moving poems selected as well. I'd highly recommend it for anyone interested in the craft of poetry. I reread some of the poems inside on a daily basis ('Dulce et decorum est', 'From An Atlas of the Difficult World', 'Jubilate Agno', and others) and felt overcome by emotion each time. A wonderful book.

[Debbie Teashon · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I am looking for inspiration, this is one of my go to books. This has a permanent place at my bedside. The book includes a lot of other author's poetry to show, teach and inspire me with my own writing.

Mayes an accomplished writer and poet herself, leads you down an inspired path to finding your own prose.

[Catherine Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect introduction to all forms of poetry and many, many wonderful poems from famous poets past and present. Frances lists lots of excellent poetry exercises at the end too. I can't wait to read Under the Tuscan Sun next.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for a poetry class. Gives some great advice for those interested in writing poetry and she also includes a wonderful selection of poetry examples that runs the gamut.

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm reading this as part of a poetry reading group, and it has been a very helpful guide...especially for someone like me who hasn't put any effort into reading poetry since college.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading and using as a resource this month. Lots of writing exercises for the dreaded "writer's block" which is also known as procrastination :-).

[Abbi Dion]

Pretty great guide. Introduced me to one of my favorite sestinas, "Vanishing Point" http://inwardboundpoetry.blogspot.com...

[James Kendall · Rating 3 out of 5]

was an ok text book. has some interesting poems.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great for readers and writers alike. Mayes goes step by step and explicates by holding hands with brilliant work both modern and classic. English centric with some translations.

[Chrissy · Rating 5 out of 5]

love love love love love