RE:Verse: Turning Towards Poetry - Softcover

Many people are intimidated by poetry, thinking it difficult and high-brow and not for them. But it is still considered an essential part of art and literature. RE:Verse asks; Why and How should we read poetry?

This book, aimed at people just starting with literature, takes nothing for granted but opens poetry up to all in a way that makes it both exciting and fresh. Examples are taken from a balanced combination of traditional writers such as Keats, Wordsworth, Blake and Shakespeare, and modern poets such as Seamus Heaney, Jackie Kay and Benjamin Zephaniah.

RE:Verse ranges over all periods of literature, and over the many critical theories that attempt to show why poetry matters. It places poems into their historical context, looks at poetry in translation, and discusses why much poetry is so difficult as to seem almost unreadable.

It sets the standard for talking about how to read poetry, and what to do when this seems to be impossibly difficult. Ultimately, it is the essential, easy-to-read guide to the subject.

RE:Verse is an introduction to reading poetry. It combines close reading and practical criticism in a series of suggestive master classes that illuminate what poetry can be and, crucially, how it can be better understood. It is suitable for all readers of poetry, from those studying at school or university, to those who simply wish to develop their own personal understanding.

RE:Verse begins with two chapters on poetic form, before going on to look more widely at poetry in its various historical contexts. It is this integration of matter and manner, putting form into context and context into form that makes RE:Verse such an invigorating introduction to the study of poetry.

Of course, poetry can be difficult and RE:Verse does not seek, or claim, to make it easy. Rather it attempts to show how difficulty should be seen not as a stumbling block, but as an opportunity to pause and reflect on meaning and as a marker of where language overflows its boundaries. In this way, the reader is guided towards a fuller understanding of the different kinds of poetry, and a greater appreciation of its pleasures. The book?s eight parts are followed up by a section on technical terms in poetry, and by suggestions for further study.

With examples drawn from across the range of English and Irish poetry, and translations from French and German, RE:Verse is written in the belief that poetry is essential and challenging, and the conviction that by immersing ourselves in its undoubted complexities, it can become an essential part of the way in which we live in the world.

Jeremy Tambling is currently Professor of Literature at the University of Manchester, having previously been Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He has written widely on many aspects of literature, including most recently Blake's Night Thoughts (2004) and Becoming Posthumous (2001), which The Guardian hailed as 'a delicate dismantling of what we thought the past was for'. He is currently working on a major study of Dickens and London.