How To Read A Poem

Lucid, entertaining and full of insight, How To Read A Poem is designed to banish the intimidation that too often attends the subject of poetry, and in doing so to bring it into the personal possession of the students and the general reader.




Offers a detailed examination of poetic form and its relation to content.

Takes a wide range of poems from the Renaissance to the present day and submits them to brilliantly illuminating closes analysis.

Discusses the work of major poets, including John Milton, Alexander Pope, John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, W.H.Auden, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, and many more.

Includes a helpful glossary of poetic terms.

Terry Eagleton is John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester. His recent publications include The English Novel (2004), Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2003), The Idea of Culture (2000), Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (1999), Literary Theory: An Introduction (Second Edition, 1996) and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996), all published by Blackwell Publishing.

Preface.
Acknowledgements.
1. The Functions of Criticism.
The End of Criticism?
Politics and Rhetoric.
The Death of Experience.
2. What is Poetry?
Poetry and Prose.
Poetry and Morality.
Poetry and Fiction.
Poetry and Pragmatism.
Poetic Language.
3. Formalists.
Literariness.
Estrangement.
The Semiotics of Yury Lotman.
The Incarnational Fallacy.
4. In Pursuit of Form.
The Meaning of Form.
Form Versus Content.
Form as Transcending Content.
Poetry and Performance.
Two American Examples.
5. How to Read a Poem.
Is Criticism Just Subjective.
Estrangement.
Tone, Mood and Pitch.
Intensity and Pace.
Texture.
Syntax, Grammar and Punctuation.
Ambiguity.
Punctuation.
Rhyme.
Rhythm and Metre.
Imagery.
6. Four Nature Poems.
‘Ode to Evening’.
‘The Solitary Reaper’.
‘God’s Grandeur’.
‘Fifty Faggots’.
Glossary.
Index.