How to Read a Poem

Language was exquisite

What a feast one finds here for the lover and budding lover of poetry. This fascinating and engaging book, complex but clear, is designed as an introduction to poetry for both students and interested readers, but is rather more than that. It begins with interesting discussions on the 'end of criticism,' 'politics and rhetoric,' the 'death of experience' and 'imagination.' From here, Eagleton dives into poetry's relations: to prose, morality, fiction, pragmatism and language. A look at the Formalists is followed by an extended discussion on meaning and form. Eagleton then provides some discussion of poetry in performance and two American examples of critical analysis before walking us through the reader's and analyst's magic land of measures for exploration and enjoyment - a poem's tone, mood, intensity, texture, ambiguity, rhyme, rythm and meter, imagery, syntax, grammar and punctuation. He ends the book with a separate section in which he discusses four nature poems. Overall, a wonderful book of a timeless quality, useful as a guide for both the reader and the writer. I found this book so helpful as a guide to modern poetry criticism and analysis.

Eagleton writes well, no one denies that. And he's got some trenchant observations and good analytical skills. But his books do seem to pump out very familiar themes to an Eagleton reader, such as Marxist literary criticism and the Russian Formalists, with very little variations on those themes. And he seems to over-elaborate many sentences and many arguments, fiddling around with a single idea but expressing it in twenty different ways, one after another, swooning with uncertain effects at times. The book is at its most superfluous in the chapter on Russian formalists (chapter 3), which could be amputated painlessly. One could also lop off chapter 1 with little inconvenience, and weed off from Chapter 4 anything other than Eagleton's close readings. What would be left after doing all that is a superb work of applied literary criticism. And some readings ARE superb. He applies finely-tuned reading techniques to a number of poets, and the result is a thrilling encounter with multiple meanings, provocative interpretations, an array of techniques and effects working deftly together. In short, what studying literature is all about. Just for that, How to Read a Poem is worth it. And for brilliant phrases like this one: "In everyday life, talking about imaginary people as though they were real is known as psychosis; in universities, it is known as literary criticism" (p. 22).

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I got this as a textbook for my undergraduate Poetry workshop. While it has plenty of information about poetry inside, Eagleton is incredibly hard to comprehend, especially for beginnings. As always, he is long-winded and makes things way more complicated then he needs to. If you have to get this book for school, be prepared to spend some extra time deciphered Eagleton's writings, especially if you are new to poetry.

I think this may be a book for people who have bought; read and enjoyed poetry beyond the duties of formal education. Terry Eagleton brings so much more to the reading of a poem -and still rings true.

This is one of the worst books I've ever read. I am an English teacher with a Masters in English and Education, and I love poetry! However, this book makes me hate poetry. The author is a pompous narcissist that makes bold claims (using words and phrases like ALL the time and ALWAYS for his own opinion and ideas), and it offers no citations or references from where he draws his ideas. The book references lines from poetry, but doesn't have the poems in the book for the reader to make the connections he is making. It is confusing, repetitive, and boring. Do NOT read this book unless you are required to, and even then, I hope you survive the book without hating poetry altogether.

No editor for this book = big mistake. Examples intended to bolster academic information were often limited in scope and off the point. Some were clearly too personal for an academic book, disparaging to American poetry, and ignorant of obvious feminine points of view.

We all have our own ideas about reading a poem. This books clarifies areas, we did not know we were missing. And this information is vital in making sure we completely get the gest of what we are reading. A much needed book to get the whole concept.

A quick Amazon search for `how to read a poem' shows there's a good few books running with this title. My guess is each of them, in their own way, are tapping into the insecurity a poetry-noob inevitably feels when they open an invitingly slender volume only to discover a dismayingly incomprehensible rabble of words and phrases with seemingly little internal cohesion or general meaning. Terry Eagleton has written a book aimed at the intelligent beginner. If you are someone who is aware of poetry but doesn't always get it, someone who wants to talk intelligently about the subject without having to get your hands dirty and actually write the stuff, and if you're as familiar with Marx as you are with Milton, then this is the cerebral introduction you might be looking for. Eagleton gives some quick definitions of poetry and criticism on his terms, a swift hello to a little bit of theory, and then tries to show why being able to distinguish between the content, or meaning, of poetry and its form, or method, is an important part of understanding a poem in its own terms. He encourages you to allow each poem to stand for itself, separate from any external need for clarity of meaning, identifying such utilitarian concerns more with sales receipts and instruction manuals. There's plenty of examples from different poets littered through the book, from Shakespeare to Stevie Smith, Christina Rossetti, Hilda Doolittle, etc, and what Eagleton does really well for me is to develop a believable and interesting narrative about each poem he uses. Even a poem as superficially simple as William Carlos Williams' 'This is Just to Say', has a distinct purpose behind it. For Eagleton, the form of a poem (all the many reasons that it sounds the way it reads, rather than just saying what it means) is closely linked to its cultural context, which makes for some interesting explanations of why Pope is so Pope-ish, or Eliot so Eliot-like. Ultimately though, this is a book about poetry in a general sense. About how we relate to it as readers and writers, and not about how to grind a poem down and spectroscopically identify its constituent parts. If you want a book that tells you how to distinguish your spondees from your trochees then maybe An Introduction to English Poetry (Fenton) is your buy. That one has whole chapters on trochees and spondees, which you won't find here.

Down to earth, concepts easy to grasp, spurs interest to read more poetry.

ARW. If u want to appreciate a poem in entirety, look no further just get this book. The vivid and humorous writing style of Eagleton you are surely going to love it. A critic and this book is definitely a must read for poetry readers.

The book is in excellent condition and a great reading!