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Poetry: A Very Short Introduction

Bernard O'Donoghue

26 September 2019

ISBN: 9780199229116

176 pages
Paperback
174x111mm

In Stock

Very Short Introductions

Price: £8.99

In this <i>Very Short Introduction</i> Bernard O'Donoghue explores the many different forms of writing which have been called 'poetry', from the Greeks to the present day. He considers the varying status and uses of poetry, and engages with contemporary debates as to what value poetry holds today.

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Description

In this <i>Very Short Introduction</i> Bernard O'Donoghue explores the many different forms of writing which have been called 'poetry', from the Greeks to the present day. He considers the varying status and uses of poetry, and engages with contemporary debates as to what value poetry holds today.

  • Discusses what poetry is, and what it is for, with examples from both contemporary and ancient poets
  • Examines the contemporary debates surrounding the value and universality of poetry.
  • From distinguished modern poet and literary critic, Bernard O'Donoghue.
  • Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over nine million copies sold worldwide

About the Author(s)

Bernard O'Donoghue, Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College, Oxford

Bernard O'Donoghue is an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, where he taught Medieval English and Modern Irish Poetry. Also a poet and a literary critic, his poetry collection Gunpowder (Chatto & Windus, 1995) was awarded the 1995 Whitbread Poetry Award. He has authored and edited several titles, including The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney (CUP, 2008) and Reading Chaucer's Poems: A Guided Selection (Faber, 2015). In 2006, his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was published by Penguin.

Table of Contents

    Introduction
    1:Truths universally acknowledged
    2:Poetry's areas of authority and aptitude
    3:The language of poetry and its particular devices
    4:The kinds of poetry and their contexts
    5:Poets and readers
    Conclusion
    Further Reading
    Index

Reviews

"...achieves an air of indispensability, as both a guidebook for the enquiring beginner, and as a handbook of poetic values for the determined practitioner." - Simon Armitage

"Everyone near the beginning of their life in poetry will want to have this book, and everyone further down the track will value it as a stimulation." - Andrew Motion

"A bold encounter with the questions that make his subject so compelling." - Professor Stephen Regan, Durham University

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