Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse

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Overview

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance," wrote Alexander Pope. "The dance," in the case of Oliver's brief and luminous book, refers to the interwoven pleasures of sound and sense to be found in some of the most celebrated and beautiful poems in the English language, from Shakespeare to Edna St. Vincent Millay to Robert Frost. With a poet's ear and a poet's grace of expression, Oliver shows what makes a metrical poem work - and enables readers, as only she can, to "enter the thudding deeps and the rippling shallows of sound-pleasure and rhythm-pleasure that intensify both the poem's narrative and its ideas."

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Overview

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance," wrote Alexander Pope. "The dance," in the case of Oliver's brief and luminous book, refers to the interwoven pleasures of sound and sense to be found in some of the most celebrated and beautiful poems in the English language, from Shakespeare to Edna St. Vincent Millay to Robert Frost. With a poet's ear and a poet's grace of expression, Oliver shows what makes a metrical poem work - and enables readers, as only she can, to "enter the thudding deeps and the rippling shallows of sound-pleasure and rhythm-pleasure that intensify both the poem's narrative and its ideas."

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780395850862
  • Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  • Publication date: 7/28/1998
  • Pages: 208
  • Sales rank: 233,931
  • Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.25 (h) x 0.44 (d)

Meet the Author

Mary Oliver is one of the most celebrated and best-selling poets in America. Her books include Red Bird; Our World; Thirst; Blue Iris; New and Selected Poems, Volume One; and New and Selected Poems, Volume Two. She has also published five books of prose, including Rules for the Dance and, most recently, Long Life. She lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Pt. 1 The Rules
1 Breath 3
2 Patterns 6
3 More About Patterns 19
4 Design: Line Length 29
5 Release of Energy Along the Line 36
6 Design: Rhyme 40
7 Design: Traditional Forms 50
8 Words on a String 57
9 Mutes and Other Sounds 60
10 The Use of Meter in Non-Metric Verse 62
11 The Ohs and the Ahs 65
12 Image-Making 67
Pt. 2 The Dancers One by One
13 Style 79
Pt. 3 Scansion, and the Actual Work
14 Scansion: Reading the Metrical Poem 87
15 Scansion: Writing the Metrical Poem 90
16 Yourself Dancing: The Actual Work 93
Pt. 4 A Universal Music
17 Then and Now 103
Envoi 104
Pt. 5 An Anthology of Metrical Poems 109
Permissions 189
Index 190

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