Poetry for Dummies Book

The book provides a good introduction to poetry - its various forms, how to read and interpret and write it. While poetry's content and form are seemingly infinite, ranging from the simple and straightforward to highly obscure language that requires background and dedication to appreciate, the common feature to all poetry is the use of language as an art form, although the authors do not state this so explicitly. Interestingly, the dictionary's definition is verse -- "a sequence of words arranged metrically in accordance with some rule or design" - - or prose "having beauty of thought or language." By language, the authors emphasize that most poetry is meant to be read aloud. Beauty lies as much on sound as it does on meaning or form.

One of their criteria for poetry is the ability of words or sound to evoke emotion. This is more challenging for the complex forms of poetry that require "doing legwork," "tracking things down," by consulting with the dictionary, history books and reference or, in the case of "The Wasteland," the services of a good teacher. This is certainly the case with ancient and old poems or much of contemporary poetry with "modernist," "symbolism," or "imagism" styles that the authors reference in this book. Regarding these later day poems, the reader has to make a decision at some point whether, if a poem's value is not immediately evident, it is worth it to spend time on it.

Loved one of the reviews of this book: "Gotta start somewhere...why not here."