Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens: On Reading and Writing Poetry Forensically

by Paisley Rekdal

Overview

An innovative and accessible guide to writing and reading poetry by an acclaimed poet and beloved professor of poetry.

What makes reading a poem unlike reading anything else? In Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens, acclaimed poet and teacher Paisley Rekdal demonstrates how to observe the building blocks of a poem—including its diction, form, imagery, and rhythm—and construct an interpretation of its meaning. Using guided close readings and nearly 40 creative and critical “experiments,” this book shows how a poem takes shape through the intersection of all its lyric elements. Drawing on the work of poets from William Shakespeare to Jericho Brown, Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens reveals how to read and write critically, and how to appreciate—and achieve—the exhilarating craft of poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393881981
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/22/2024
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paisley Rekdal is the author of ten books of poetry and nonfiction, including Appropriate: A Provocation. The director of the American West Center and a distinguished professor of English at the University of Utah, she lives in Salt Lake City.

Editorial Reviews

2024-08-30
A professor’s guide to understanding the craft of poetry.

For Rekdal, all poems, regardless of form or any other apparently defining feature, require individuals to pay “conscious attention to how [they] think about and use language.” Readers must therefore dispense with interpretations they may bring to a poem and instead become literary “detective[s].” To work toward that end, she dedicates each chapter to in-depth discussions of poetic elements—diction, rhyme, meter, etc.—and to what she calls “forensic” analyses of those elements that she accomplishes by examining works by such diverse poets as François Villon and Robert Hayden. What sets Rekdal’s method apart from simple close reading is that it focuses on how meaning—in the form of poetic “evidence”—accrues for individual readers. This gives insight into the way that poets combine elements for a particular effect. The author further suggests that forensic ladder-style readings give readers the space to question themselves and their own observations (for example, why they may be drawn to certain images or words). In this context, even “red herring” misreadings are useful for the way they help individuals learn to navigate the polysemic complexities of poetry and become more skilled reader-detectives. To help individuals better understand—and wrestle with more meaningfully—the poetic elements she brings to the fore, Rekdal offers exercises and a selected list of poems to consider at the end of each chapter and a comprehensive glossary of poetic terms. This meticulously crafted guidebook will appeal not only to teachers seeking to educate beginning students of poetry but also anyone seeking to understand the intimate and complex connection between poets and their readers.

Wise words about how we can become better readers.

Kirkus Reviews