Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End

I recently came across this book unexpectedly while browsing library shelves and, drawn by the title, started reading. Quickly I realized I'd need my own copy in order to be able to highlight just about every sentence. Certainly Herrnstein Smith has a dense writing style, and this is a book that requires a person's full attention, but I can honestly say that this is the most useful and thought-provoking book on writing that I've read in years. It demonstrates convincingly what all writers need to know: that the effect of a piece on a good reader is not random but a result of the many particular choices -- word choice, structural choices, choice of sounds and rhythms -- that we make. This book offers the writer (and the teacher of writing) a finely-tuned understanding of what those decisions will mean when the work encounters the reader.

This is an excellent book, one cited extensively in current studies of narration and closure, even though this text is nearly thirty-five years old. Though it purports to deal with closure in verse, many of its principles are applicable to fiction in general. Torgovnik's *Closure in the Novel* (1981) sets out to do for novels what Herrnstein Smith has done for poetry, but the later book is not nearly so rich in analysis and suggestion. A note on finding it used though. There are currently used copies listed here at very steep prices ($... to $... dollars each). This book is available at used bookstores for more in the neighborhood of $...to $.... There's even a copy listed now through BookFinders at just under $.... It's also available in all university libraries, to tide you over until you locate a copy of your own.