Studying Poetry helps the reader to understand, appreciate and fully enjoy poetry as a genre, to develop an informed response to the individual poem, and to become aware of the larger concerns involved in reading poetry. It examines a wide range of poems and poets and offers stimulating readings of individual poems.


The book is divided into three parts. The first, 'Form and Meaning', deals with the formal characteristics of poetry, such as metaphor, symbol, image, metre, rhythm and rhyme. The second, 'Critical Approaches', explores the relation between reading poetry and key concepts in critical theory, focusing on the poem as object, the idea of the author and the role of the reader. In part three, 'Interpreting Poetry', the discussion broadens out to explore issues that encompass political poetry, the poem in history and the limits of poetry.


This new edition includes a chapter on the validity of poetry. It looks at the transition from an oral to a print culture and explains why we still need and take pleasure in poetry in its many forms. MP3 files of the authors reading some of the poems analysed in the book are available to listen to at www.hodderplus.com/literature/studying_poetry.