Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse | John Hollander | Proves that rhyme can still be relevant

Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse | John Hollander | A playful way to learn!

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Rhyme's Reason: A ...

	Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse John Hollander Yale University Press, 2001 - 140 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In his classic text, Rhyme's Reason, the distinguished poet and critic John Hollander surveys the schemes, patterns, and forms of English verse, illustrating each variation with an original and witty self-descriptive example. In this substantially expanded and revised edition, Hollander adds a section of examples taken from centuries of poetry that exhibit the patterns he has described.

Proves that rhyme can still be relevant

This is a clever and masterful book. The author demolishes the new fashional nonsense about rhyme being creatively passe. Rhyme is not necessarily restrictive or formulaic. It can still be powerful, enjoyable and richly expressive.

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A playful way to learn!

I bought this book for a class and it is my favorite of all our poetry texts. It is just plain fun to read. Hollander presents poetic forms by using them as he explains each concept. I noticed that some people thought this was "too witty" to learn from, but I found it helpful in that I forgot that I was trying to learn and simply just began playing with language. Which is as it should be when writing poetry!

Overall a great book, I recommend it for beginning poets especially. But I'm guessing it would be a fun refresher for veterans of word-craft as well.

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Solid introductory book

Hollander's book is a solid little primer on some of the major issues of poetry. Using the technique of "formal self-description" Hollander provides examples of various meters, rhetorical figures, and forms of verse. The writing is clever, and the self-descriptions are insightful.

That said, I think the book is not super useful for teachers, as a textbook that is. Were I to teach a poetry or literature course, I would probably only copy those sections out of the book that cover specific rhetorical figures and stanzaic forms that I planed to teach in my class. Otherwise, a lot of the material will seem superfluous to the work you're doing.

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How Hollander Says a Thing

Read _Rhyme's Reason_ as one delights
In proper forms the poet writes.
With this attention getter
(A rondeau would be better)
I recommend this handy guide.

John Hollander, by way of me,
An humble reviewer, as you can see,
Makes sense of verse terrifically.
Read _Rhyme's Reason_.

My third edition brings my applause!
A good deal of poetic laws.
Find more familiar poetry
In history and society.
Shop wisely - heed the ooh's and ah's.
Read _Rhyme's Reason_.
All The Funs In How You Say A Thing: An Explanation Of Meter & Versification

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Not particularly useful

Bit too witty to learn anything. The author is too busy being cute to explain anything very well. Also, only marking stressed syllables only does half of the job of scansion; marking both stressed and unstressed syllables provides a complete visual aid for discerning meter. Add to that the author's party-line views on free verse and you have a rather lame book. Consider this a book-length version of Coleridge's horrible little piece on meter. Timothy Steele's All the Fun's in how you Say a Thing is much better.

reviews: page 1, 2

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