Rhyme’s Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry Hardcover – February 15, 2022 by Brad Leithauser

Description

Author: Leithauser Brad

Color: Multicolor

Package Dimensions: 0x0x567

Number Of Pages: 368

Release Date: 15-02-2022

Details: Product Description
From the widely acclaimed poet, novelist, critic, and scholar, a lucid and edifying exploration of the building blocks of poetry and how they’ve been used over the centuries to assemble the most imperishable poems • “Anyone wanting to learn how to remodel, restore, or build a poem from the foundation up, will find this room-by-room guide on the architecture of poetry a warm companion.” —Tomás Q. Morín, author of Machete

We treasure our greatest poetry, Brad Leithauser reminds us in these pages, “not for its
what but its
how.” In chapters on everything from iambic pentameter to how stanzas are put together to “rhyme and the way we really talk,” Leithauser takes a deep dive into that
how—the very architecture of poetry. He explains how meter and rhyme work in fruitful opposition (“Meter is prospective; rhyme is retrospective”); how the weirdnesses of spelling in English are a boon to the poet; why an off rhyme will often succeed where a perfect rhyme would not; why Shakespeare and Frost can sound so similar, despite the centuries separating them. And Leithauser is just as likely to invoke Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, or Boz Scaggs as he is Chaucer or Milton, Bishop or Swenson, providing enlightening play-by-plays of their memorable lines.

Here
is both an indispensable learning tool and a delightful journey into the art of the poem—a chance for new poets and readers of poetry to grasp the fundamentals, and for experienced poets and readers to rediscover excellent works in all their fascinating detail.

Portions of this book have appeared in
The New Yorker, The New York Times, and
The New York Review of Books.
Review
“A warm, well-considered celebration of a rich literary form. . . [Leithauser] aims his thoughtful overview of prosody at general readers who may feel trepidation when encountering a poem . . . Unlike scholarly books that focus mostly on what a poem says, Leithauser is equally concerned with how a poem conveys meaning: the building blocks that make for its particular architecture.” —
Kirkus Reviews

“Brad Leithauser brings élan and a lifetime of learning to his exploration of poetic form. Alert to the ways poetry is at once a traditional and a revolutionary art,
Rhyme’s Rooms invites us to slow down and to observe the powerful interplay among a poem’s technical, musical, emotional, and intellectual elements. The book’s probing chapters on meter, stanza, and rhyme, its succinct and helpful glossary, as well as the scores of poems Leithauser analyzes with sophistication and verve, will open up new interrogations of poetry’s expressive force and will become indispensable to readers, writers, students and teachers.”
—Richie Hofmann, author of A Hundred Lovers

“Erudite and funny,
Rhyme’s Rooms by Brad Leithauser is a stroll through the art of building poems. It wisely reminds us that the shape of a poem depends as much on the body of the poet as it does on the spirit.”
—Tomás Q. Morín, author of Machete

“If Hogwarts Academy recommended this book of practical magic for its Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum, that wouldn’t be the only excellent reason to buy it. Professor Leithauser knows as much about poetry as anyone alive, and he’s very good company—synoptic, insightful, funny. And the illustrative dollops and samples he brings to table (many of them new to me) might be another reason enough to get this book. It’s a dessert-cart to delight the literary and remind apostates whyever they thought they loved poetry in the first place.”
—Richard Kenney, author of Terminator

“This is neither a writer’s manual, nor a reader’s handbook, but something much more enticing, an architectural tour of the art of poetry by a contemporary master. Leithauser’s witty and learned presence enlivens every page, but his aim is to help us experience for ourselves how the formal blueprints make for a thrilling environment, how the features of each room play between expectation and surprise.