POETRY HANDBOOK: A Dictionary of Terms

This is a unique and curious volume which purports to define the terms used in poetry today and in the past. The author is herself a practising poet, a critic, and professor of poetry at Columbia University. Miss Deutsch states ""To secure control the poet must go through an apprenticeship, and he is lucky or wise.... if he has the right sets of masters and tools. The present work grew out of the felt need for such a tool: a dictionary of the terms used in discussing verse techniques and some of the larger aspects of poetry together with examples of poetic practice"". Here are discussed and exemplified Alexandrines, madrigals, proaody, and dozens of the technical terms. The illustrations chosen by the author are usually apt-but something eludes her in this newest of ""do-it-yourself"" books, perhaps the ingredient genius? But the young poet will find it a useful book, although it is hard to designate an audience wider than that.