Poetry: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #614

by Bernard O'Donoghue

Poetry, arguably, has a greater range of conceptual meaning than perhaps any other term in English. At the most basic level everyone can recognize it--it is a kind of literature that uses special linguistic devices of organization and expression for aesthetic effect. However, far grander claims have been made for poetry than this -- such as Shelley's that the poets "are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," and that poetry is "a higher truth."

In this Very Short Introduction Bernard O'Donoghue provides a fascinating look at the many different forms of writing which have been called "poetry" -- from the Greeks to the present day. As well as questioning what poetry is, he asks what poetry is for, and considers contemporary debates on its value. Is there a universality to poetry? And does it have a duty of public utility and responsibility?

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Literature, Literary Criticism, Theory, Audiobook, Writing

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Ulysse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry is nothing much
But then again
So is breathing

[Joshua Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the second “A Very Short Introduction,” and more challenging than the VSI on Consciousness. I don’t think the book is poorly written, the author seems to really know poetry, its history, and devices, but the language and concepts presented may be harder for those looking to get into poetry, so my own complaint may be that I’m just not as well versed in this subject and its ideas.

My first and biggest takeaway is that defining poetry isn’t possible. And while that may be frustrating for me, I also really like this about poetry and art. The book delves into this question, and many others, using quotes from famous poets, including a few non-Western poets, which they don’t all agree on what poetry is, how it should be used, and who should write it. I think these examples may be my favorite aspect of the book as it introduces you to new works, and writers.

I do think it’s worth a read if you are interested in the subject, just be prepared for a steeper climb with this introduction.

I do want to come back to this in a few years and see where I fall then.

[Helbob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know if this is a good book or not because, quite frankly, I didn’t understand a word of it. This is not a criticism of the book or it’s author, he is clearly an expert in his field. I just underestimated my ability to learn complex new stuff. Learning at my age has its limits. I think I understood more in the short introduction to Keynes! Still love poetry though. Still quite like writing it. Just, obviously don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Oh well.

[Jason Ray Carney · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't my favorite VSI. I struggled with its chapter organization: it was scattered, eclectic, and distracted. I am on the lookout for undergraduate (or advanced undergraduate) introductory texts to broad literary topics. For that purpose, this would not work. It is centrifugal rather than centripetal in its approach to poetry. It stumbles the way a lot of academic "introductions" do: it hesitates to define its object, it deploys several caveats, and then it questions those caveats; by and by, the topic (in this case, poetry) becomes everything and nothing. Far too often the writer performed their knowledge of literary critical history rather than--what I would have preferred--outlined a cohesive definition of poetry, dared a history of its evolution, and touched on some of its related theoretical enigmas. The problem may not be with the work itself but with the series: VSI's sometimes seem confused as regards their audience. If this was for a graduate seminar in literary studies or for a humanities scholar in a related field, it would be great. But the value it can offer to general readers, undergraduates specifically, seems doubtful. If you already love poetry and are versed in the history of literary criticism, you'll love this. If not, you might get frustrated with this.

[Yxas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent read, although Western Poetry: A Very Short Introduction would've been a better title.

O'Donoghue doesn't go into much detail on poetic devices or the linguistics of poetry here. There's thin treatment on metrical patterns, prosody etc, so I'll eventually pick up Fenton's Introduction or Williams' Toolkit to learn more about those aspects of poetry.

[Mihai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Way better and in a sense harder than expected. The reader must be quite acquainted with English poetry before reading it, as there is a continuous back-and-forth between different definitions of what poetry is, and the examples used required some familiarity. Highly enjoyable!

[লোচন · Rating 4 out of 5]

কবিতার বিভিন্ন আন্দোলন, ভিন্ন ভিন্ন এরা সম্পর্কে জানার জন্য ঠিক আছে। চলে আরকি। মূল পাওনা হচ্ছে - মাঝেমধ্যে কিছু আলোচনা আসছে, যেমন কবিতা কেন লেখা হয়, উদ্দেশ্য কি - কোন দুনিয়াবি কারণ লাগে, নাকি পোয়েট্রি এগজিস্টস অনলি ফর দা সেক অফ পোয়েট্রি? আগে শুধু প্রমথ চৌধুরি আর বুদ্ধদেবের লজিক জানতাম, এখন আরো কিছু সূত্র পাইলাম।

তারপর পাঠক আর কবির মাঝে বোঝাপড়ার সম্পর্ক তৈরি কেন জরুরি। হাইডেগার কেন বলছিলেন যে একমাত্র কবিতাই মনোভাবের পুরোপুরি সম্পূর্ণতা প্রকাশের জন্য উপযোগী - ইত্যাদি ইত্যাদি।

সব মিলায়ে সময় নষ্ট হয় নাই পড়ে। ভালো বই।

[Hank Hoeft · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent discussion of what poetry is and what its importance is as a human endeavor. I am a high school English teacher and I took copious notes as I read this book, to use the next time I teach a unit of poetry to ninth graders.

[Peter Longden · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Sealey Challenge 2025 Day 11
Book 11: 'Poetry: a Very Short Introducton' by Bernard O'Donoghue
Today, I discovered this book, 'Poetry: A Very Short Intrody=uction' on my Spotify account and, because I was driving much of the day, decided, for a change, I'd read 'about' poetry, rather than reading poems. I found this a really interesting and enlightening book, not only is it a 'short' introduction, it is also a 'simple' introduction, not focused on the technicalities of writing poetry, but more interested (and interesting) in answering questions of why write poetry and, what makes poetry, what makes a poet; and poetry genres. Illustrated with passages from some of histories greatest poets, this is an excellent book for anyone wanting to learn more about poetry in general without being hit by ionic pentametre, sonnet structure, rhythm and metre. Yes, there is some technical language being used, but I found that terms and concepts are explained well as part of the text.
Also available in paperback and on Kindle.

[snakeling · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was altogether too dense and too confusing for "a very short introduction". It was also 98% centered on English language poetry, which to be fair, the author warned us about in his introduction, but I think it would have been better to just make it an introduction to English-language poetry and ignore the tiny tidbits of Chinese and Ancient Greek.

[Ashwin Balaji · Rating 3 out of 5]

very academic and honestly, it is well beyond any introduction possible for a beginner like me. it is definitely a good introduction to the technicalities of poetry, not a getting started guide. for a getting started guide for poetry, this is the place you have to look into: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

[ukuklele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetry is a composition of words set to music. (Ezra Pound, pg. 31/158)

This book is pretty quick to finish but it's not as easy as the Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry to comprehend. Part of it because I'm not very much into the subject yet. But I persevere.

Compared to the
Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology
(the author Helen Vendler is mentioned here), that latter book is more helpful to me on introducing English poems, as it gives a lot of full pieces to read, while this book doesn't give much, even maybe just excerpts, not the full version--maybe because this is only "a very short introduction", so it only contains very short examples as well :v

... that it is not poetry itself, but the exploration of what poetry is that is such an enhancement of life. (Wallace Stevens, pg. 125/158)

Well, I'm literally exploring what poetry is. And as far as it goes to this day, I don't sense any enhancement in my life yet. Still, I wonder.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author is clear in the introduction that he's going to only write about what he knows about - which is noble. Unfortunately, what he knows about appears to be a very small subsection of poetry, which is mostly limited to old white people who have had plenty written about them already. The author mentions rap in a throwaway sentence, says that he won't really talk much about poetry written in languages he doesn't understand because it loses strength (which is true ... and it comes from a different source than Eurocentricism normally does, but it feels pretty much like the same thing as Eurocentricism. Not a bad book, just a disappointing one.

[Noah Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.5/10
I have been enjoying this series of "Very Short Introductions" including this edition on Poetry. Yes it was a little bit all over the place, but I actually enjoyed that aspect of it. I wasn't just O'Donoghue's opinion on Poetry, it was a sampling of many different poets opinions on what poetry is. And obviously those poets described poetry poetically so yeah it can be a bit opaque. I would say that the chapters on poetic language and devices and on forms of poetry could have been a little bit more fleshed out. But over all I did really like this book. And I am looking forward to learning more about the poetics of poetry.

[Kit]

Not the strongest VSI. Mostly concerned with defining poetry, which is not necessarily what I would want out of an introduction. This book is like introducing someone by explaining the etymology of their name and how their parents came up with it: "Hey Sharon, have you met Alexander? It comes from the Greek of course. His parents almost named him Johnathan!"

The best chapter was the one focused on the unique features of English poetry. I particularly liked the comparison with Chinese, although I could not for the life of me find the poem he cited by 'Wu Mei-yuan'

[Taylor Swift Scholar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm was an English major, so I wasn't sure what I would get out of a Very Short Introduction to Poetry. My understanding of poetry hasn't changed, but it was enjoyable to read. O'Donoghue focuses entirely on the challenge of defining poetry and presents definitions from poets and theorists over the centuries with examples. I am looking forward to following up on books in the further reading section.

[David Lai · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the clearest introduction to poetry. O'Donoghue seems determined to be non-judgemental and unprescriptive, but this leads to a mushiness in his writing, and little progress on the issue of what counts as poetry. He touches on "spoken word poetry", but says nothing about popular formats such as rap and Instapoetry, which, while maybe they don't merit serious attention, could have stimulated a useful discussion.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately I can see why this was only an intro, but also that that’s because it’s pretty dense already. Turns out there’s a lot of academia behind poetry. Poesy? See I don’t know the difference. This book deals with the question of what poetry is, and it’s kind of neat to hear an overview of various arguments and multiple facets of the question. Of course, it was in one ear and out the other, but at least that’s another book down for the tally.

[Vincent DiGirolamo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful tutorial on a massively broad and potentially intimidating subject. Love having this perspective to help situate myself in all I read, ancient, modern, and contemporary; epic, dramatic, and lyrical, Eastern, Western, and Tagorian, noting we can't get too schematic about this art, which O'Donoghue handily and generously defines as "that which enhances life." Comes in all shapes and sizes: comic, therapeutic, found, trite, and masterly. In invitation to further study, to be sure.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure this is as much of an introduction to poetry as it is a runaway train tour through every poet and poetic concept in the traditional Western canon. It's an interesting, useful book (especially for English lit. uni students) but if this was my first experience of poetry analysis I'd have run a mile after 3 pages.

[Cooch]

This is required reading on the subject.

The exploratory, rather than didactic, tone, which further involves the reader thinking for themselves, is what makes this short introduction so valuable and excellent. The fact that O'Donoghue is justly able to adopt both the critic's and the writer's point of view is also a boon. There are good suggestions for further reading too.

[Darin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little surprised by this... I was going initially for a way for a poetry noob to gain some sort of introduction to reading poetry, but this is a much more meta discussion of the structure, meaning, and role of poetry in current society. That said, I got a lot of thought-provoking ideas from our so it was ultimately worth my time.

[Shervin · Rating 4 out of 5]

More theoretical than I was expecting, but nevertheless a fascinating analysis of "what poetry is." Because its formal properties often change, I think it's one of those things that will always be easier to recognize than to define.

[Noel Cisneros]

O'Donoghue ofrece una aproximación a la poesía (sobre todo a lo que la tradición en lengua inglesa entiende por poetry, él mismo señala al principio que sus referencias proceden de dicha tradición). Con múltiples ejemplos sustenta sus argumentos y da una amplia idea de lo que es la poesía.

[Mily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tiny but mighty, this book is dense with poetry history that hits from all directions. If you don’t know some history of poetry already you will be looking up lots of names. In the end though poetry is ya know poetry. Lort artists are annoying and I love them

[Arthur Grau · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a big fan upon initial reading. Misses the vital role poetry plays in music, art, and love. Completely eurocentric, and misses ancient verse from The rest of the world.

[Cameron Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a "very short" introduction, fantastic.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well one was tantilisied with the idea of looking at poets from other cultures and there was a lack of anything other than white men.

[szymborskalyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic introduction. Wow. It’s not best for the acquainted, but just perfect for the dilettante.

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK it could’ve been a little more nuanced.