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graywacke's review
4.0
Four and half months later I finished this, reading maybe 4 pages a day in bed before I went to sleep.
For most of the book I thought it was nothing special, just a dated text book with a lot of classic poetry. This wasn't a bad thing. Thanks to this book I read, for the first time:
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Colleridge
- The Love Song of Alfred Profrock by T.S. Elliot
- Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
- L'Allegro and Il Penseroso by John Milton
And many others. Those just stand out.
But 3/4 through Ciardi starts to cover poetic metrics and fulcrums. I think I had never covered this before. I found this section fascinating. Maybe I just needed an intro into this stuff, or maybe he did it well. But that part made the book much more rewarding.
This is a 1975 edition of a Ciardi's 1959 original. It's updated with at-the-time recent poetry. Don't expect many women.
For most of the book I thought it was nothing special, just a dated text book with a lot of classic poetry. This wasn't a bad thing. Thanks to this book I read, for the first time:
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Colleridge
- The Love Song of Alfred Profrock by T.S. Elliot
- Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
- L'Allegro and Il Penseroso by John Milton
And many others. Those just stand out.
But 3/4 through Ciardi starts to cover poetic metrics and fulcrums. I think I had never covered this before. I found this section fascinating. Maybe I just needed an intro into this stuff, or maybe he did it well. But that part made the book much more rewarding.
This is a 1975 edition of a Ciardi's 1959 original. It's updated with at-the-time recent poetry. Don't expect many women.
veniasum's review
4.0
Category: Books it's hard to say whether you "read" or not.
Part textbook (though that sounds derogatory) on how to read poetry and what makes it good, part anthology organized by the topic being discussed. I discovered a substantial collection of poems I hadn't read before and was glad to read. I also was pushed to think about reading (and writing) in ways I hadn't heard articulated before. If I were ever to teach a class on poetry, I would revisit this first.
Read about half with careful attention to detail, and skimmed the second half. Worth revisiting when I cure my addiction to keeping library books past their due.
Part textbook (though that sounds derogatory) on how to read poetry and what makes it good, part anthology organized by the topic being discussed. I discovered a substantial collection of poems I hadn't read before and was glad to read. I also was pushed to think about reading (and writing) in ways I hadn't heard articulated before. If I were ever to teach a class on poetry, I would revisit this first.
Read about half with careful attention to detail, and skimmed the second half. Worth revisiting when I cure my addiction to keeping library books past their due.
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