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Dictionary of Poetic Terms
Formerly The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms , this newly updated version contains over 1,600 entries on the devices, techniques, history, theory, and terminology of poetry from the Classical period to the present. To bring it up-to-date, the authors have added fifty new entries and examples. The Dictionary of Poetic Terms is compact enough for classroom use, but thorough enough to be the definitive reference handbook for poets and scholars, and the many writers who are both.
456 pages, Paperback
First published July 24, 2003
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About the author
Jack Myers
61 books13 followersJack Elliott Myers was an American poet and educator. He was Texas Poet Laureate in 2003, and served on the faculty of Southern Methodist University in Dallas for more than 30 years. He was director of creative writing at SMU from 2001 through 2009. Myers co-founded The Writer's Garret, a nonprofit literary center in Dallas, with his wife, Thea Temple. He published numerous books of and about poetry, and served as a mentor for aspiring writers at SMU and as part of the writers' community and mentoring project of The Writer's Garret.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 3, 2020
This book is exactly what it says on the cover, that’s all you really need to know.
April 28, 2023
Amazon informs me I bought this book five years ago, and I just finished reading it today. No, I’m not that slow of a reader. I simply chose, for whatever reason, to read a few entries per day (or week), nipping at the work in bits, ingesting it slowly, savoring it.
Looking back, I think this was the correct technique. This is a lot of material to absorb, and to reabsorb, if you’re serious about writing poetry, or even reading it. One can of course write while ignorant of such concepts as scansion or meter, or knowing terms like wrenched rhyme or zeugma. I, for instance, have survived forty-one years (today is my birthday) completely oblivious to the meaning of zeugma. That said it never hurts to increase one’s knowledge, or add another tool to the toolbox, another term to the lexicon.
For a time, poetry seemed too hidebound by the constraints of tradition, the expectations of the professors. The form was very much humanized—and perhaps a bit too bowdlerized—in the hands of demotic populists like Whitman and later Bukowski. The result is that poetry has become a go-to form for the lazy, the most self-absorbed, a bastion for the therapeutic and confessional rather than the aesthetically disciplined.
A lack of respect or disdain for traditions is one thing, and is sometimes in order when the zeitgeist must renew itself. A total ignorance of all that came before is another matter. Or, as the old saying goes, you have to learn the rules before you can subvert them. Otherwise you’re just shouting into the wind. Here, then, is a chance to learn the rules, or at least have an encyclopedic source of terms on the subject.
It's not math or science—with a right answer and well-established method for finding that answer. But treating it with a bit more reverence, as a skill to be learned rather than just a promethean fire to be toyed with—will yield better results, a richer understanding of one’s own skills (and limitations) and a greater appreciation of the talents and labors of others. Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas and many others went through a lot of trouble making sure their metrical feet and emphases and rhymes felt natural and easy, by working very, very hard. Their work has stood the test of time because they treated it as work, in addition to it being a joy and pleasure. It’d be nice if more people took up the challenge, the calling, rather than trying to get attention or venting feelings with words shouted during open mics that would be better put to music, or left unread in journals. Not that divorces and drug addictions and one’s feelings about how bees pollinating flowers reminds one of lovemaking aren’t worthy subjects for poetry, but if delivered without some rigor, a plan, and overarching picture, it’s gonna end up as doggerel.
It's all ultimately subjective, of course, but if your own philosophy of the art (or even inchoate feelings regarding poetry) track at all with these, this is a good book to read. If not, then you’re bound to view it (and my views) as hidebound, stodgy, the kind that the kids in Dead Poets’ Society were figuratively shredding when they literally rent their texts at their teacher’s behest in that movie’s most famous scene. In which case, disregard this review, and the book, and shred on.
Looking back, I think this was the correct technique. This is a lot of material to absorb, and to reabsorb, if you’re serious about writing poetry, or even reading it. One can of course write while ignorant of such concepts as scansion or meter, or knowing terms like wrenched rhyme or zeugma. I, for instance, have survived forty-one years (today is my birthday) completely oblivious to the meaning of zeugma. That said it never hurts to increase one’s knowledge, or add another tool to the toolbox, another term to the lexicon.
For a time, poetry seemed too hidebound by the constraints of tradition, the expectations of the professors. The form was very much humanized—and perhaps a bit too bowdlerized—in the hands of demotic populists like Whitman and later Bukowski. The result is that poetry has become a go-to form for the lazy, the most self-absorbed, a bastion for the therapeutic and confessional rather than the aesthetically disciplined.
A lack of respect or disdain for traditions is one thing, and is sometimes in order when the zeitgeist must renew itself. A total ignorance of all that came before is another matter. Or, as the old saying goes, you have to learn the rules before you can subvert them. Otherwise you’re just shouting into the wind. Here, then, is a chance to learn the rules, or at least have an encyclopedic source of terms on the subject.
It's not math or science—with a right answer and well-established method for finding that answer. But treating it with a bit more reverence, as a skill to be learned rather than just a promethean fire to be toyed with—will yield better results, a richer understanding of one’s own skills (and limitations) and a greater appreciation of the talents and labors of others. Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas and many others went through a lot of trouble making sure their metrical feet and emphases and rhymes felt natural and easy, by working very, very hard. Their work has stood the test of time because they treated it as work, in addition to it being a joy and pleasure. It’d be nice if more people took up the challenge, the calling, rather than trying to get attention or venting feelings with words shouted during open mics that would be better put to music, or left unread in journals. Not that divorces and drug addictions and one’s feelings about how bees pollinating flowers reminds one of lovemaking aren’t worthy subjects for poetry, but if delivered without some rigor, a plan, and overarching picture, it’s gonna end up as doggerel.
It's all ultimately subjective, of course, but if your own philosophy of the art (or even inchoate feelings regarding poetry) track at all with these, this is a good book to read. If not, then you’re bound to view it (and my views) as hidebound, stodgy, the kind that the kids in Dead Poets’ Society were figuratively shredding when they literally rent their texts at their teacher’s behest in that movie’s most famous scene. In which case, disregard this review, and the book, and shred on.
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