Authors: Stephen Fry
ISBN-13: 9781592403110, ISBN-10: 1592403115
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Date Published: August 2007
Edition: Reprint
Stephen Fry is a bestselling novelist, comedian, and actor who has appeared in such films as V for Vendetta, Wilde, Bright Young Things, A Fish Called Wanda, and Gosford Park, and has been heard as the narrator for the Harry Potter series.
Comedian and actor Stephen Fry's witty and practical guide, now in paperback, gives the aspiring poet or student the tools and confidence to write and understand poetry.
Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. In The Ode Less Travelled, he invites readers to discover the delights of writing poetry for pleasure and provides the tools and confidence to get started. Through enjoyable exercises, witty insights, and simple step-by-step advice, Fry introduces the concepts of Metre, Rhyme, Form, Diction, and Poetics.
Most of us have never been taught to read or write poetry, and so it can seem mysterious and intimidating. But Fry, a wonderfully competent, engaging teacher and a writer of poetry himself, sets out to correct this problem by explaining the various elements of poetry in simple terms, without condescension. Fry's method works, and his enthusiasm is contagious as he explores different forms of poetry: the haiku, the ballad, the villanelle, and the sonnet, among many others. Along the way, he introduces us to poets we've heard of but never read. The Ode Less Travelled is not just the survey course you never took in college, it's a lively celebration of poetry that makes even the most reluctant reader want to pick up a pencil and give it a try.
… The Ode Less Travelled
How to read this book. Three golden rules | ||
1 | Metre | |
I | How we speak : meet metre : the great lamb : the lambic pentameter | 1 |
II | End-stopping, enjambment and caesura | 21 |
III | More metres : four beats to the line : mixed feet | 55 |
IV | Ternary feet : the dactyl, the molossus and tribrach, the amphibrach, the amphimacer, quaternary feet | 77 |
V | Anglo-Saxon attitudes | 97 |
VI | Syllabic verse | 113 |
Table of metric feet | 120 | |
2 | Rhyme | |
I | The basic categories of rhyme : partial rhymes, feminine and triple rhymes; rich rhyme | 123 |
II | Rhyming arrangements | 143 |
III | Good and bad rhyme? : a thought experiment : rhyming practice and rhyming dictionaries | 147 |
Rhyme categories | 168 | |
3 | Form | |
I | The stanza : what is form and why bother with it? | 171 |
II | Stanzaic variations : open forms : Terza Rima, the quatrain, the rubai, rhyme royal, Ottava rima, Spenserian stanza : adopting and adapting | 179 |
III | The ballad | 191 |
IV | Heroic verse | 202 |
V | The ode : sapphic, pindaric, horatian, the lyric ode, anacreontics | 209 |
VI | Closed forms : the villanelle | 221 |
VII | More closed forms : Rondeau, Rondeau Redouble, Rondel, Roundel, Rondelet, Roundelay, Triolet, Kyrielle | 247 |
VIII | Comic verse : cento, the clerihew : the limerick : reflections on comic and impolite verse : light verse : parody | 261 |
IX | Exotic forms : Haiku, Senryu, Tanka. Ghazal : Luc bat : Tanaga | 274 |
X | The sonnet : Petrarchan and Shakespearean : curtal and caudate sonnets : sonnet variations and romantic duels | 281 |
XI | Shaped verse : pattern poems : silly, silly forms : acrostics | 293 |
4 | Diction and poetics today | |
I | The whale : the cat and the act : madeline : diction : being alert to language | 307 |
II | Poetic vices : ten habits of successful poets that they don't teach you at Harvard Poetry School, or chicken verse for the soul is from Mars but you are what you read in just seven days or your money back : getting noticed : poetry today : goodbye | 320 |
App | Arnaud's algorithm |