How to Read Poetry Like a Professor

How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse by Thomas C. Foster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like to read poetry, but if you didn't I think this would be an excellent step toward fixing that problem. Foster is solid in his information, but casual in his approach and very aware of the objections that may arise in his reader as he explains the mechanics of poetry. It is covering the same material I learned in college from Perrine's Sound and Sense, but is shorter and less academic. I also found it funny (could just be me though).

"We need to be clear here that Old English doesn't mean Shakespeare (Early Modern English) and it doesn't even mean Chaucer (Middle English). Nope, we're talking about Anglo-Saxon before the Norman conquest brought a lot of French elements and made the language sound less like gargling." (p. 58)

I am adding another of Foster's books, How to Read Novels Like a Professor, to my TBR list as well as 2 books from his bibliography: Mary Oliver's Poetry Handbook and Preoccupations: Selected Prose by Seamus Heaney.

I am counting this book toward the 2018 Nonfiction Reading Challenge.