For those of you who might not know, John Hollander is a contemporary American poet. As well as having a lot of poetry published, he also writes about poetry, and I found out about this particular title in the bibliography to another book about poetry and poetic form.
It’s very well done and not at all boring - Hollander writes in verse constantly to try and explain/illustrate the concepts he’s discussing so it ends up being very amusing, entertaining as well as highly informative. There are also examples of others’ work quoted, as well as his own.
I honestly had no idea there were so many different forms of poetry, I’ll bet there are way more than is discussed in this slim volume but it’s an excellent starting point if you want to discover the main ones and how they work. Be warned, it’s also a lot of information crammed into a small book! But I know I’ll be using it as a reference text from this point on.
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