Reading Poetry
An Introduction

By Tom Furniss & Michael Bath
July 1996
Who Works International Ltd.
ISBN: 0133552985
448 pages, Illustrated, 4 ¼" x 8 ½"
$52.50 Paper original

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Reading Poetry provides an introduction to the ideas and techniques that can help students produce informed and exciting readings of poetry. A wide spectrum of examples has been included, ranging from fifteenth-century lyrics and ballads to contemporary poetry from all over the English-speaking world.

Contents
Introduction: Close Reading and the Poetic System
What is Poetry?
How do we Read it?
Poetry and Experience/The Experience of Poetry
Rhetorical Strategies
Figurative Language
Theories of Metaphor
History of Metaphor
Hearing Voices
Tone and Irony
Ambiguity
Closure, Pluralism, Indeterminacy
Allusion and Intertextuality
Interpreting Form
Rhythm and Meter
Interpreting Poetic Form
Significant Form: Sound and Shape
Contexts
Introducing Contexts
Genre: The Ballad
The Sonnet
Poetry and History: Production and Reception
Poetry and Politics: Conservative and Radical Legislators
Poetry and Politics: Class, Gender, Race, Nation
Further Reading
Index

Features
• A unique combination of theory and practice unprecedented in an undergraduate textbook
• Arguments and discussions are supported throughout by analytic examples and case studies
• Well-known 'canonical' poems placed alongside the poetry of marginalized groups exemplify the different meanings and uses of poetry

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