Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End
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Book Overview
In Poetic Closure, distinguished literary scholar Barbara Herrnstein Smith explores the provocative question: How do poems end? To answer it, Smith examines numerous individual poems and examples of... This description may be from another edition of this product.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0226763439
ISBN13:9780226763439
Release Date:August 2007
Publisher:University of Chicago Press
Length:289 Pages
Weight:0.68 lbs.
Dimensions:8.0" x 1.0" x 5.3"
Customer Reviews
2 ratings
A Tremendously Helpful Book
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
I recently came across this book unexpectedly while browsing library shelves and, drawn by the title, started reading. Quickly I realized I'd need my own copy in order to be able to highlight just about every sentence. Certainly Herrnstein Smith has a dense writing style, and this is a book that requires a person's full attention, but I can honestly say that this is the most useful and thought-provoking book on writing that I've read in years. It demonstrates convincingly what all writers need to know: that the effect of a piece on a good reader is not random but a result of the many particular choices -- word choice, structural choices, choice of sounds and rhythms -- that we make. This book offers the writer (and the teacher of writing) a finely-tuned understanding of what those decisions will mean when the work encounters the reader.
Well worth reading
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
This is an excellent book, one cited extensively in current studies of narration and closure, even though this text is nearly thirty-five years old. Though it purports to deal with closure in verse, many of its principles are applicable to fiction in general. Torgovnik's *Closure in the Novel* (1981) sets out to do for novels what Herrnstein Smith has done for poetry, but the later book is not nearly so rich in analysis and suggestion. A note on finding it used though. There are currently used copies listed here at very steep prices ($... to $... dollars each). This book is available at used bookstores for more in the neighborhood of $...to $.... There's even a copy listed now through BookFinders at just under $.... It's also available in all university libraries, to tide you over until you locate a copy of your own.
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