Sunday, May 25, 2008

The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky

Title: The Sounds of Poetry
Author: Robert Pinsky
ISBN-13: 9780374526176
Publisher: Farrar, Straux and Giroux/1998
Pages: 117

Robert Pinsky is a poet of US, who teaches graduate writing programme at Boston University. Here in this book, he takes up poetry in the vocal form. He wants that we shoud how to read out poetry loud, where should we pause and where to stop. He gives stress on diction, syntax, accent, verse form..ie..rhymed poetry, metric poetry, free verse and blank verse.

He takes up numerous examples of poems by great poets, breaking the lines for us, teaching us the right intonations for each word, line and whole poem. He believes that poetry has to be vocal and should be peformed in order to comprehend it fully.

I am not saying that I understood it all at one go. This book is to be read very slowly, savoured in the way and should be followed the way he wants us to. He expects us to read aloud all kinds of poetry to understand those better. He says,"Poetry is a vocal, which is to say a bodily, art." This book can be read by those who are seriously into poetry and also those who are amateurs. To say,

0 comments: