Peter Barry is Professor of English at Aberystwyth University

Peter Barry's Reading poetry succeeds in the most difficult of tasks: it is at once introductory, sure to help novice students of poetry find their way through what may seem a bewildering maze of "poetic" features, and yet advanced enough to challenge the most sophisticated reader. It moves outward from the poetry building blocks - line, meter, image - to questions of poetry and visuality, poetry and space-time, poetry and theory. Commonsensical, wise, witty and open-minded, Reading poetry draws on an impressively wide set of examples, from Thomas Wyatt to such experimentalists as Tom Raworth. This wonderfully unpretentious book is a classic of its kind. Professor Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University -- .

• Introduction: ‘One small step’READING THE LINES 1Meaning 2Imagery 3Diction 4Metre 5FormREADING BETWEEN THE LINES6Close and distant reading7Feeling and sentiment8Text and context 9Poems and pictures 10Sequences and clusters READING BEYOND THE LINES11Place and time 12Poetry with theory13Minimalism and micro-poetry14Concrete canticles15Textual genesisEnd-noteList of poems discussedGlossaryFurther readingIndex

Peter Barry is Professor of English at Aberystwyth University

Peter Barry's Reading poetry succeeds in the most difficult of tasks: it is at once introductory, sure to help novice students of poetry find their way through what may seem a bewildering maze of "poetic" features, and yet advanced enough to challenge the most sophisticated reader. It moves outward from the poetry building blocks - line, meter, image - to questions of poetry and visuality, poetry and space-time, poetry and theory. Commonsensical, wise, witty and open-minded, Reading poetry draws on an impressively wide set of examples, from Thomas Wyatt to such experimentalists as Tom Raworth. This wonderfully unpretentious book is a classic of its kind. Professor Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University -- .

• Introduction: ‘One small step’READING THE LINES 1Meaning 2Imagery 3Diction 4Metre 5FormREADING BETWEEN THE LINES6Close and distant reading7Feeling and sentiment8Text and context 9Poems and pictures 10Sequences and clusters READING BEYOND THE LINES11Place and time 12Poetry with theory13Minimalism and micro-poetry14Concrete canticles15Textual genesisEnd-noteList of poems discussedGlossaryFurther readingIndex