A Little History of Poetry
Synopsis
A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work—over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world, such as Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats. He also looks at more recent poets, like Derek Walcott, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou, who have started to question what makes a poem "great" in the first place. This little history shines a light on the richness and variation of the world’s poems—and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing.Book details
- Series:
- Little Histories
- Author:
- John Carey
- ISBN:
- 9780300252521
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780300232226
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- Pages:
- 320
- Reading age:
- Not specified
- Includes images:
- Yes
- Date of addition:
- 2020-05-02
- Usage restrictions:
- Copyright
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Copyright by:
- John Carey
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Categories:
- Language Arts, Literature and Fiction, Poetry