The Poetry Handbook: A Guide to Reading Poetry for Pleasure and Practical Criticism

I am a teacher of English literature at the UNAM, in Mexico City. I have been working with Lennard's book for two or three years and it is amazing the way my students have reacted to it. They have learned a lot and are so enthusiastic about poetry now that I can only thank Mr. Lennard for his book. I recommend it strongly if you are interested in poetry.

Many books have been written about poetry and how to read it, but this one I have found to be particularly well conceived. It is written for British students who wish to sit for exams, and caters to their needs, but anyone, including seasoned poetry readers, will find it instructive. Lennard breaks the book down into chapters devoted to meter, form, layout, punctuation, lineation, rhyme, diction, syntax, history, biography, and gender. Each chapter covers various poems by various authors, but they all end with a detailed reading of one poem, 'Nearing Forty' by Nobel Prize Laureate Derek Walcott. This is a fascinating approach and quite successful, because the understanding that one gains of this poem from these eleven readings, each with a different emphasis, is quite exhaustive. The benefits do not apply only to this one poem, however, because one now has a model of close reading that can be applied to any poem, anywhere. This is an excellent book for use both in the classroom and by oneself.