An introduction to English poetry
This introduction, which is designed with writer and reader in mind, looks at the variety of poetic practice in English and discusses, in the simplest and most approachable manner, the character of different poetic lines and forms. What is metre, anyway, and is it essential to our definition of poetry? What is an iambic line, and is the something important to know? What is a trochee, and is it something inferior to an iamb? What are couplets, quatrains, ottava rima and sonnets? Are they out-moded forms? Is there any such thing as a proper training for a poet? Is light verse the enemy of true poetry, or is it a kind of poetry? And what makes a great song lyric? Are great song lyrics poems, or do they belong to some different category? Is verse drama a thing of the past? Does a composer need a librettist in order to make an opera - or could one do just as well with randomly chosen texts?