Poetry: A Very Short Introduction

Poetry, arguably, has a greater range of conceptual meaning than perhaps any other term in English. At the most basic level everyone can recognize it—it is a kind of literature that uses special linguistic devices of organization and expression for aesthetic effect. However, far grander claims have been made for poetry than this — such as Shelley's that the poets "are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," and that poetry is "a higher truth."

In this Very Short Introduction Bernard O...