|
|
|||
| Because I frequently mention, and pass comment on, poems, readers often ask me to recommend a good introductory book that might help them "get" poetry. Well, here is my recommendation: Poems, by C.F. Main and Peter J. Seng. It is subtitled Wadsworth Handbook and Anthology, "Wadsworth" being the name of the publishing house. This is a lovely book, with an excellent selection of poems and lots of good, plain, sensible explanation about how each poem works. It even includes some examples of bad poems, explaining why they are bad. However, this recommendation comes with a caution. I used the Second Edition of this book for a year to teach college students. It is terrific for this purpose, and was widely used at the time. (Late 1970s.) At the end of the year, I handed over my course to a new teacher. He asked me what book I had used to teach poetry. I showed him my Main & Seng. He asked if I might leave it for him, so I did. A couple of years later I decided I wanted a copy of my own again, so I wrote to the publisher and they very kindly sent me one. This, however, was the Fourth Edition, and to my mind it is inferior to the Second Edition. It seems, in fact, to have been dumbed down. For example: All the good stuff about scansion, with the names of the different feet (iamb, trochee, dactyl, etc. etc.), which in the Second Edition was right there in the text, in the Fourth has been shuffled off to an Appendix. Probably it has been dropped altogether by now. So I recommend that you go to your favorite used-books web site (mine is Abebooks.com) and order a Second Edition of Main & Seng. There seem to be plenty available. |
||||