Verse: An Introduction to Prosody [Paperback]

Verse is a seminal introduction to prosody for any student learning to read or write poetry, from secondary to graduate school.

• Discusses  iambic pentameter and other kinds of metrical verse, scansion, rhythm and rhyme, free verse, song, and advanced topics such as poetic meter, linguistic approaches to verse, and the computer scansion of metrical poetry
• Written in a clear, engaging style by a poet and teacher with more than 30 years of experience teaching the subject
• Supplemented by a user-friendly website with student exercises and additional resources

List of Sidebars vii

Introduction 1

1 The Iambic Pentameter Line 7

2 Other Meters 49

3 Beyond the Line 99

4 Free Verse 151

5 Song 193

6 Advanced Topics 237

Glossary 275

Index of Poets and Poems 297

Charles Hartman is Poet in Residence and Lucy Marsh Haskell ’19 Professor of English at Connecticut College, USA, where he teaches poetry writing, modern and contemporary poetry, and song.  He is the author of seven collections of poems, most recently New & Selected Poems (2008), and critical books on free verse, jazz and poetry, and computer poetry.

To read a poem with complete pleasure we must understand how it works rhythmically and how its rhythms are related to those of a whole network of other poems. Verse is a seminal introduction to prosody —the rhythmic organization of poetic language—for any student learning to read or write poetry.  Written in a clear and engaging style by a poet and teacher with more than 30 years of experience teaching the subject, this book explains the fundl³*