How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry

( 2 )
Pick Up In Store

Pick Up in Store

Reserve and pick up in 60 minutes at your local store

Paperback (Reprint)
$11.19
BN.com price
$15.00 List Price (Save 25%)
Marketplace (New and Used)
from
$0.99
$15.00 List Price (Save 93%)
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
All (71)  
Used (47)  
New (24)  
Close
Sort by
Page 1 of 8
Showing 1 – 10 of 71 (8 pages)
$0.99
(Save 93%)
Big River Books
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(1379)

Condition:

New — never opened or used in original packaging.

Like New — packaging may have been opened. A "Like New" item is suitable to give as a gift.

Very Good — may have minor signs of wear on packaging but item works perfectly and has no damage.

Good — item is in good condition but packaging may have signs of shelf wear/aging or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Acceptable — item is in working order but may show signs of wear such as scratches or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Used — An item that has been opened and may show signs of wear. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Refurbished — A used item that has been renewed or updated and verified to be in proper working condition. Not necessarily completed by the original manufacturer.

Good
2000 Paperback Good Cover and pages may have some wear or writing. Binding is tight. We ship daily Monday-Friday.

Ships from: Powder Springs, GA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.99
(Save 93%)
More Than Words MA
Seller since 2005

Feedback rating:

(992)

Condition: Acceptable
Acceptable The book is a readable copy showing signs of wear and the pages are intact. The cover may have some creases or minor tears. The dust jacket (if applicable) may be ... missing. The book may be an ex-library book. The book may contain: a publisher remainder mar All orders guaranteed and ship within 24 hours. Your purchase supports More Than Words, a nonprofit job training program for youth, empowering youth to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business. Read more Show Less

Ships from: Waltham, MA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.99
(Save 87%)
New Chapter Recycling
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(3285)

Condition: Very Good

Ships from: Lakewood, WA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.99
(Save 87%)
GreenEarthBooks
Seller since 2009

Feedback rating:

(4876)

Condition: Good
Light shelving wear with minimal damage to cover and bindings. Pages show minor use. Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read. Recycle and ... Reuse! Read more Show Less

Ships from: Portland, OR

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.99
(Save 87%)
thriftbooks-com
Seller since 2007

Feedback rating:

(5902)

Condition: Acceptable
Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.

Ships from: Auburn, WA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.99
(Save 87%)
Blue Cloud Books
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(2520)

Condition: Very Good
This book shows minor wear and is in very good condition. Blue Cloud Books ??? Hot deals from the land of the sun.

Ships from: Phoenix, AZ

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.99
(Save 87%)
Silver Arch Books
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(1295)

Condition: Very Good
Book shows a small amount of wear - very good condition! Selection as wide as the Mississippi.

Ships from: St Louis, MO

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$2.39
(Save 84%)
Penntext
Seller since 2012

Feedback rating:

(290)

Condition: Good
Ships within 24 hrs of your order. Open Mon - Fri. May have minimal notes/highlighting, minimal wear/tear.

Ships from: Downingtown, PA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$2.40
(Save 84%)
Bookbyte-OR
Seller since 2002

Feedback rating:

(10216)

Condition: Good
May include moderately worn cover, writing, markings or slight discoloration. SKU:9780156005661-4-0

Ships from: Salem, OR

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$2.49
(Save 83%)
Dream Books Company, LLC
Seller since 2009

Feedback rating:

(250)

Condition: Good
2000 Paperback Good Used book with normal wear and tear and may contain writing. Stock photo may be different from actual book cover.

Ships from: Englewood, CO

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
Page 1 of 8
Showing 1 – 10 of 71 (8 pages)
Close
Sort by

Overview

Now in paperback, the landmark guide to the magic and meaning of poetry, by an acclaimed poet and critic.

How to Read a Poem is an unprecedented exploration of poetry and feeling. In language at once acute and emotional, distinguished poet and critic Edward Hirsch describes why poetry matters and how we can open up our imaginations so that its message can make a difference. In a marvelous reading of verse from around the world, including work by Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and Sylvia Plath, among many others, Hirsch discovers the true meaning of their words and ideas and brings their sublime message home into our hearts. A masterful ...

See more details below
Sending request ...

More About This Book

Overview

Now in paperback, the landmark guide to the magic and meaning of poetry, by an acclaimed poet and critic.

How to Read a Poem is an unprecedented exploration of poetry and feeling. In language at once acute and emotional, distinguished poet and critic Edward Hirsch describes why poetry matters and how we can open up our imaginations so that its message can make a difference. In a marvelous reading of verse from around the world, including work by Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and Sylvia Plath, among many others, Hirsch discovers the true meaning of their words and ideas and brings their sublime message home into our hearts. A masterful work by a master poet, this brilliant summation of poetry and human nature will speak to all readers who long to place poetry in their lives.

About the Author:

Edward Hirsch is the author of five books of poetry. He writes frequently about poetry for such magazines as The New Yorker and American Poetry Review. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Prix de Rome, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for Literature. He teaches at the University of Houston.

Editorial Reviews

Baltimore Sun
A lovely book, full of joy and wisdom.
Boston Book Review
Laudable...The answer Hirsch gives to the question of how to read a poem is: Ecstatically.
More Reviews (4) Fewer Reviews
Detroit Free Press
Hirsch's contribution is significant, [grounded] in the obvious pleasure he has experienced through words....Who could resist the wiles of this poetry-broker-a writer rapidly becoming the baby boomers' preeminent man of letters?
KLIATT
Hirsch is a poet and a passionate reader of poetry. In this guide, he reaches out to all those who may be disaffected by the mere mention of poetry, even citing Cicero who had nothing but disdain for it, perhaps threatened as a politician by poetry's power to change the status quo. Hirsch presents us with "certain emblematic poems" (specifically lyric poems) that hold meaning for him, and instructs the reader to focus on a personal, emotional response. He views the poem as a "message in a bottle" (title of his first chapter), which may be picked up at random by a reader who may not expect to be touched by the words, but is moved in some inexpressible way, noting the relevance to their feeling life, their "heartland," as Hirsch calls it. The poem that works for us, he says, is one that engenders a spirit of awe. He cites Whitman's poem, "Beginning My Studies," that describes his wonder at truly seeing what's before him: "the least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love." To enrich one's reading, Hirsch encourages the reader to learn about the different forms a poem may take, whether epic or narrative, and their distinctiveness compared with the dramatic monologue or lyric poem. In subsequent chapters, Hirsch discusses the "making of the poem" by using examples. He explains the use of dramatic image and structure to portray death in Neruda's "Nothing But Death," drawing on similar uses by other writers, and enriching the reading experience by providing background and analysis. He includes work by many of the masters, mostly through excerpts but sometimes giving the complete poem for which he provides a detailed analysis. As an academic, some of his analyses may become too complexfor a younger reader or one not used to this way of looking at literature. But Hirsch's interpretations are based more on the human qualities expressed and how they are dramatized rather than on a more rigid literal explanation. He does help the reader by including a glossary of poetic terms. Also appended is a recommended reading list. Anyone who reads poetry will find that experience enriched by Hirsch's book. It would also be a valuable text for high school and college literature classes. KLIATT Codes: SA*—Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, Harcourt, 354p, 23cm, 98-50065, $15.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Sue E. Budin; YA Libn., Ann Arbor P.L., Ann Arbor, MI, July 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 4)
Library Journal
Although it was only a decade ago that doomsayers foresaw the death of poetry as a viable literary genre, there has been a remarkable resurgence of interest. Poetry slams at bookstores and nightclubs, "Poets in the Schools" programs, and the unprecedented appearance of poets on mainstream television all point to the renewed popularity of the genre. Here are two new guides designed to enrich the experience of poetry. Hirsch (On Love, LJ 6/15/98) has gathered an eclectic group of poems from many times and places, with selections as varied as postwar Polish poetry, works by Keats and Christopher Smart, and lyrics from African American work songs. A prolific, award-winning poet in his own right, Hirsch suggests helpful strategies for understanding and appreciating each poem. The book is scholarly but very readable and incorporates interesting anecdotes from the lives of the poets. Part poetry explication and part memoir, Peacock's charming book includes 18 favorite poems that she has collected and cherished over the years. Offering sensitive interpretations of each work, Peacock tends to favor modern and contemporary poets such as May Swenson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Like Hirsch, Peacock is a popular and critically acclaimed poet; she is also a founder of the "Poetry in Motion" program that puts poetry in America's buses and subways. Peacock encourages the shared enjoyment of poetry through reading groups and provides practical advice for organizing a poetry circle. Most public libraries will want to acquire the Peacock book, while Hirsch is a good choice for academic and larger public libraries.--Ellen Sullivan, Ferguson Lib., Stamford, CT Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Jonathan Wilson
...Hirsch isn't writing for everybody; his imagined readers are young college students, those willing but poetry-ignorant ephebes of the new millennium who can't tell dactyl from duende....The days of browsing are clearly over...and with them, inevitably, goes the solitary reader on a lone voyage of discovery. ''Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night.'' One could do worse.
— The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780156005661
  • Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  • Publication date: 3/21/2000
  • Edition description: Reprint
  • Pages: 368
  • Sales rank: 226,200
  • Lexile: 1210L (what's this?)
  • Product dimensions: 6.03 (w) x 9.01 (h) x 1.01 (d)

Meet the Author

Edward Hirsch is the author of six books of poems and three books of prose, among them the national bestseller How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry . He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Prix de Rome, and a MacArthur Fellowship, and is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Preface
1 Message in a Bottle 1
2 A Made Thing 31
3 A Hand, a Hook, a Prayer 46
4 Three Initiations 61
5 At the White Heat 88
6 Five Acts 116
7 Beyond Desolation 156
8 Poetry and History: Polish Poetry after the End of the World 172
9 Re: Form 192
10 A Shadowy Exultation 226
11 Soul in Action 244
12 "To the Reader at Parting" 259
The Glossary and the Pleasure of the Text 265
A Reading List and the Pleasure of the Catalog 323

First Chapter

Chapter One


Message in a Bottle


Heartland

Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture—the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us—has momentarily stopped. These poems have come from a great distance to find you. I think of Male-branche's maxim, "Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul." This maxim, beloved by Simone Weil and Paul Celan, quoted by Walter Benjamin in his magisterial essay on Franz Kafka, can stand as a writer's credo. It also serves for readers. Paul Celan said:


A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the—not always greatly hopeful—belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense, too, are under way: they are making toward something.


Imagine you have gone down to the shore and there, amidst the other debris—the seaweed and rotten wood, the crushed cans and dead fish—you find an unlikely looking bottle from the past. You bring it home and discover a message inside. This letter, so strange and disturbing, seems to have been making its way toward someone for a long time, and now that someone turns out to be you. The great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, destroyed in a Stalinist camp, identified this experience. "Why shouldn't the poet turn to his friends, to those who are naturally close to him?" he asked in "On the Addressee." But of course those friends aren't necessarily the people around him in daily life. They may be the friends he only hopes exist, or will exist, the ones his words are seeking. Mandelstam wrote:


At a critical moment, a seafarer tosses a sealed bottle into the ocean waves, containing his name and a message detailing his fate. Wandering along the dunes many years later, I happen upon it in the sand. I read the message, note the date, the last will and testament of one who has passed on. I have the right to do so. I have not opened someone else's mail. The message in the bottle was addressed to its finder. I found it. That means, I have become its secret addressee.


Thus it is for all of us who read poems, who become the secret addressees of literary texts. I am at home in the middle of the night and suddenly hear myself being called, as if by name. I go over and take down the book—the message in the bottle—because tonight I am its recipient, its posterity, its heartland.


To the Reader Setting Out

The reader of poetry is a kind of pilgrim setting out, setting forth. The reader is what Wallace Stevens calls "the scholar of one candle." Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder. "Beginning is not only a kind of action," Edward Said writes in Beginnings, "it is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a consciousness." I love the frame of mind, the playful work and working playfulness, the form of consciousness—the dreamy attentiveness—that come with the reading of poetry.

    Reading is a point of departure, an inaugural, an initiation. Open the Deathbed Edition of Leaves of Grass (1891-1892) and you immediately encounter a series of "Inscriptions," twenty-six poems that Walt Whitman wrote over a period of three decades to inscribe a beginning, to introduce and inaugurate his major work, the one book he had been writing all his life. Beginning my own book on the risks and thralls, the particular enchantments, of reading poetry, I keep thinking of Whitman's six-line poem "Beginning My Studies."


Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much,
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.


I relish the way that Whitman lingers in this one-sentence poem over the very first step of studying, the mere fact—the miracle—of consciousness itself, the joy of encountering "these forms," the empowering sense of expectation and renewal, the whole world blooming at hand, the awakened mental state that takes us through our senses from the least insect to the highest power of love. We can scarcely turn the page, so much do we linger with pleasure over the ecstatic beginning. We are instructed by Whitman in the joy of starting out that the deepest spirit of poetry is awe.

    Poetry is a way of inscribing that feeling of awe. I don't think we should underestimate the capacity for tenderness that poetry opens within us. Another one of the "Inscriptions" is a two-line poem that Whitman wrote in 1860. Called simply "To You," it consists in its entirety of two rhetorical questions:


Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me,
     why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?


It seems entirely self-evident to Whitman that two strangers who pass each other on the road ought to be able to loiter and speak, to connect. Strangers who communicate might well become friends. Whitman refuses to be bound, to be circumscribed, by any hierarchical or class distinctions. One notices how naturally he addresses the poem not to the people around him, whom he already knows, but to the "stranger," to the future reader, to you and me, to each of us who would pause with him in the open air. Let there be an easy flow—an affectionate commerce—between us.

    Here is one last "Inscription," the very next poem in Leaves of Grass. It's called "Thou Reader" and was written twenty-one years after "To You."


Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
Therefore for thee the following chants.


I am completely taken by the way that Whitman always addresses the reader as an equal, as one who has the same strange throb of life he has, the same pulsing emotions. There's a desperate American friendliness to the way he repeatedly dedicates his poems to strangers, to readers and poets to come, to outsiders everywhere. Whoever you are, he would embrace you. I love the deep affection and even need with which Whitman dedicates and sends forth his poems to the individual reader. He leaves each of us a gift. To you, he says, the following chants.

(Continues...)

Reading Group Guide

1. Hirsch suggests that even the greatest poems are incomplete without readers.What role do you think the reader really plays in a poem?

2. Why do you think so many people (even people who rarely read for pleasure) turn to poems on ritual occasions, such as weddings and funerals? What, if anything, does this tell us about the need for poetry?

3. Consider this radical statement by Emily Dickinson. Is there any way to know poetry except by contact?

If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no ?re can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know. Is there any other way.

4. Consider Hirsch's discussion of reading Emily Brontë's poem "Spellbound" as a child and then his later reading of the poem as an adult (pp. 61-66). Can you think of any experiences you had with poetry as a child? Do you think your reading of those poems would be different today?

5. In discussing Elizabeth Bishop's poem "One Art" (pp. 32-33), list a few of the things you've lost, and arrange them so that the magnitude of each loss increases. Are these losses "hard to master"? Do you feel as if any of them "will bring disaster"? How do we come to terms with loss (do rituals help?) and is there anything to be gained in ?nding these losses, these feelings, organized by a poetic structure, such as a villanelle?

6. Have you ever loved an animal unreasonably? If you had to make a list of your pet's no doubt extraordinary attributes, as Christopher Smart does in writing about his cat Jeoffry (pp. 66-69), how would you make it interesting to others?What do you think of the strategy of parallelism that Smart employs?

7. What do you think happened to the two lovers in Yehuda Amichai's poem "A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention" (p. 90)? Who are "they"? How can two lovers become an invention, "an aeroplane made from a man and wife"?

8. Read Guittone d'Arezzo's poem aloud as best you can in Italian as well as in English (p. 96). How does it make you feel? What do you think of the obsessive repetition of the word "gioi" ("joy") in this poem? Is it an effective translation?

9. Read two love poems aloud, say, Paul Éluard's "Lady Love" (p. 94) and Robert Desnos's "The Voice of Robert Desnos" (pp. 100-101). Do you ?nd these voices seductive? Can words alone inspire affection or recall lost love?

10. Anna Akhmatova writes about the simple gesture of putting her left glove on her right hand in her poem "Song of the Last Meeting" (pp. 116-17). How much meaning does this gesture have?

11. How should we respond when we become aware that we are losing something we prize deeply? Constantine Cavafy's poem "The God Abandons Antony" (p. 136) gives Antony speci?c advice on how to behave, on what to do. What do you think of the counsel?

12. Miklós Radnóti's "Postcards" (pp. 146-50) were written under the most dire and extreme circumstances imaginable.Do the circumstances of how the poems were written change their meaning for you? If you had just one hour to write something by ?ashlight in the middle of the night, what would be your last communiqué to the world? Would poetry be your chosen vehicle?

13. Consider the nature of the things that Mr.Cogito would like to consider to the very end in Zbigniew Herbert's poem "Mr. Cogito and the Imagination" (p. 190). List some of the things you would never tire of thinking about.

14. Have you ever had an uncanny experience, such as the one Anthony Hecht describes in "A Hill" (pp. 233-34)? How does it change the poem when we discover that the hill in question was not a vision but a memory?

15. Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Waiting Room" (pp. 236-39) dramatizes a child's ?rst consciousness of having a self. What does she learn about the self? Would your own recognitions be any different?

16. How would you characterize the soul in Walt Whitman's poem "A Clear Midnight" (p. 245)? How would you characterize it in Emily Dickinson's poem number 683 (p. 254)? Is it still possible for us to use the word "soul"? What are the "themes" that your own spirit would most love to ponder?

17. Jorge Luis Borges said, "Poetry is something that cannot be de?ned without oversimplifying it. It would be like attempting to de?ne the color yellow, love, the fall of leaves in autumn." Is Borges right? Can poetry ever be de?ned without oversimplifying it?

Copyright © 2000. Published in the U.S. by Harcourt, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 5
( 2 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(2)

4 Star

(0)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(0)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines
Add Recommendations
Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

  • - HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
  • - Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
  • - Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
  • - Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
  • - Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
  • - Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
  • - Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

  • - By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
  • - Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
  • - See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.
Search for Products You'd Like to Recommend

Recommend other products that relate to your review. Just search for them below and share!

Create a Pen Name

Your Pen Name is your unique identiy on BN.com. It will appear on the reviews you write and other website activities. Your Pen Name cannot be edited, changed or deleted once submitted.

Your Pen Name can be any combination of alphanumeric characters (plus - and _), and must be at least two characters long.

Continue Anonymously

We're sorry, but penname is already taken.

Please select one of the following:
Your Pen Name can be any combination of alphanumeric characters (plus - and _), and must be at least two characters long.

Continue Anonymously

penname is available!

By visiting the BN.com website or marking a purchase on BN.com, a User is deemed to have accepted the Terms of Use.

Continue Anonymously

Welcome, penname

You have successfully created your Pen Name. Start enjoying the benefits of the BN.com Community today.

Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted November 20, 2001

    Learning to love poetry

    Hirsch has remarkably achieved the promise of his title. This is a rare combination of teaching about poetry while seducing the reader with a splendid selection of poems. Hirsch's fidelity to the active relation of poet to reader animates these pages. Not only a fine introduction to diverse poets,but also an incitement to poetry. My first copy became a gift to my daughter, a college freshman--then I bought a second copy to keep and read again.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted January 5, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews
If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble
Why is this product inappropriate?
Comments (optional)
500 character limit