Poetry: An Introduction is an accessible and clearly written introduction to the structural and methodological
principles underpinning poetry and its study. It aims to equip the student, researcher, and general reader with
a body of technical information that will sharpen and deepen their engagement with individual poems.
Strachan and Terry provide a lively map through what might on first experience seem the most daunting aspects of
poetry: poetic sound effects, rhythm and meter, the typographic display of poems on the page, the language of poetry,
and the use made by poets of techniques of comparison and association. The book's discussion of poetic terminology
is allied throughout to illustrative readings that show the usefulness of the terminology in approaching particular
poems; its emphasis is always a practical one, demonstrating how poems actually work.
Beginning with an historical overview of the development of English poetry from its earliest origins and finishing
with an authoritative dictionary of poetical terms, Poetry: An Introduction is an indispensable guide to the understanding
of poetry.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The key words of poetry
1.1 What is poetry?
1.2 The key words of English poetic history
2 The shape of poetry
2.1 The aesthetics of print
2.2 Pictograms and concrete poems
2.3 Visible but unreadable
2.4 Layout and punctuation
2.5 The poetic stanza and stanzaic form
3 The sound of poetry
3.1 Poetic sound effects: an overview
3.2 Onomatopoeia
3.3 Sound/patterning
3.4 Rhyme
3.5 The 'orthodox' rhyme
3.6 Some 'unorthodox' rhymes
3.7 Some indeterminacies of rhyme
3.8 Rhyme and meaning
4 Metre and rhythm
4.1 Complexities in the study of metre
4.2 The key metrical units
4.3 Metrical regularity and variance
4.4 'Missing' and 'extra' syllables
4.5 Feet
4.6 Iambic metre
4.7 Trochaic metre
4.8 Dactylic metre
4.9 Anapaestic metre
4.10 Occasional feet
4.11 Metrical verse lines
4.12 Free verse
5 Comparisons and associations
5.1 Literal v. figurative
5.2 Metaphor and simile
5.3 Metonymy and synecdoche
5.4 Tenor, vehicle and ground
5.5 Conceits and extended similes
5.6 Dead and dying metaphors
5.7 Riddle poems
6 The words of poetry
6.1 Linguistic diversity
6.2 Poetic diction
6.3 Poetry of the everyday language
6.4 Creating your own language
6.5 Diction and argots
6.6 Poems about language
6.7 The Queen's (and other people's) English
