- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; Paperback edition (5 Oct 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571195881
- ISBN-13: 978-0571195886
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 1.5 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 469,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
If you don't care about the beautiful sounds of language, read a newspaper or telephone book. If, on the other hand, the music of words delights you as much as their meaning--or you remember a time when it did--Sounds Good, to quote Coleridge, is a "stately pleasure-dome" indeed.
Rather than the usual reliance on rational intelligence to "figure out" a poet's intended meaning, editor Christopher Reid suggests that "the ear may understand a poem before the mind has been able to grasp it". Long before we make the cognitive leap, for instance, that Sylvia Plath, in "Mushrooms", is using barely noticed fungi as metaphors for meek humans who "shall by morning / Inherit the earth" we hear the insistent, hammer-like beat of their (and her) intent:
Nobody sees us,Never mind these stressed words are what poets call, in meter-speak, dactyls and spondees. The important part is hearing them thud.
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes...
Reid has chosen carefully, including some of our finest poets--from Auden to Yeats, plus 99 mellifluous stops in between. In a "Notes" section, pithy, page-by-page insights into metrical, syntactical and rhythmical tricks of the trade are given, so you'll learn, for example, that anapaests propel Stevenson's "Railway Carriage", and Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" is written in triple time. Also included for good measure (so to speak): an obligatory trip to Xanadu. -- Martha Silano
Product Description
Sounds Good offers a collection of 101 poems that have been chosen to illustrate the function of sound in poetry. It follows the publication of Ted Hughes's anthology By Heart, and was conceived as a companion to it. Whereas By Heart shows how important imagery is to the memorability of a poem, Sounds Good reveals how sound is organised within the poem and made to speak directly to the reader's imagination. The poems themselves have been arranged in such a way as to bring their musical qualities to the fore. Christopher Reid has also provided brief notes, approaching the poems from different and sometimes surprising angles, with the purpose of illuminating the processes, formal and linguistic, that have given them their vitality. Sounds Good can be enjoyed simply as a collection of some of the most beautiful poems in the English language; it can also be used as an aid to identify and explore the secret arts of poetry composition itself.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
How the Sounds Make Sense
19 Jan 2009
Sounds Good is about poems that make their point by the non-verbal sounds in the poem. Reid chose poems that used many different techniques to reinforce meaning or mood by sound alone. He points out how the jagged meter adds to the tense mood in "The Listeners." How a well placed word jars the rythym like a bang on a drum in "Her Strong Enchantments Fading."
Many of these poems, like "Cargos" delight with dazzling wordplay. Others are simply more profound because of the simplicity of their sounds.
Many of these poems, like "Cargos" delight with dazzling wordplay. Others are simply more profound because of the simplicity of their sounds.
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
