C. F. Main

"Wadsworth" is the publisher and it put its name on this "Handbook" of poetics.
The Preface is addressed to Students: ..."Furthermore, in addition to increasing one's general competence in language, poems provide a kind of knowledge unobtainable elsewhere, in college or out. This kind of knowledge is best described as 'experiential', because it is not so much contained in a poem as in a reader's experience of a poem. The aim of the book, then, is to show you how a poem imparts an experience."

The author take up the elements of poetry--words, images, figures, symbols, rhythms, sounds, and tone--in separate chapters. The penultimate chapter takes up the whole, and the final chapter considers what makes a poem "good or bad".

The authors presuppose the student to have a Dictionary and a "translation of the Bible" at hand. [viii]

A 2d Section contains a selected Anthology of over 300 canonical poems grouped by theme, subject or device. And some "fresher" proposed "pre-canonical" works. These are grouped for ease of comparison.… (more)

I've no idea where this book came from (it's simply been around our house since forever), but as a general anthology of English-language poetry from the beginning of the language to 1970, I have found none better. It includes enough of the standards without overdosing on them, and leaving plenty of room for less-standard works. I especially like the way it will sometimes include a 'classic' poem, and then follow later in the book with other poems that are clearly responses to it, without singling them out as anything more than part of the general conversation of English poetry. Also, it is rare and wonderful that nearly all the poems in this book are actually good, even the ones by less-anthologized poets; even the ones that were new at the time it was collected, before history had a chance to judge.… (more)