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Summary
Summary
Through three editions over more than four decades, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has built an unrivaled reputation as the most comprehensive and authoritative reference for students, scholars, and poets on all aspects of its subject: history, movements, genres, prosody, rhetorical devices, critical terms, and more. Now this landmark work has been thoroughly revised and updated for the twenty-first century. Compiled by an entirely new team of editors, the fourth edition--the first new edition in almost twenty years--reflects recent changes in literary and cultural studies, providing up-to-date coverage and giving greater attention to the international aspects of poetry, all while preserving the best of the previous volumes.
At well over a million words and more than 1,000 entries, the Encyclopedia has unparalleled breadth and depth. Entries range in length from brief paragraphs to major essays of 15,000 words, offering a more thorough treatment--including expert synthesis and indispensable bibliographies--than conventional handbooks or dictionaries.
This is a book that no reader or writer of poetry will want to be without.
Thoroughly revised and updated by a new editorial team for twenty-first-century students, scholars, and poets
More than 250 new entries cover recent terms, movements, and related topics
Broader international coverage includes articles on the poetries of more than 110 nations, regions, and languages
Expanded coverage of poetries of the non-Western and developing worlds
Updated bibliographies and cross-references
New, easier-to-use page design
Fully indexed for the first time
Reviews (4)
Guardian Review
It was James Dyson, inventor of not only a vacuum cleaner but also a hand dryer, who, when struggling to come up with the most abstruse and pointless subject one could study at university level, suggested "French lesbian poetry". How he would love this book. Although, alas, it contains no separate entry for French lesbian poetry, it does have two closely set pages on lesbian poetry (not to mention gay poetry and queer poetry), from which he might learn something, although I doubt he would be inclined to. Which would be a pity if my hunch is correct, for the very word "poetry" comes from the Greek "poesis", meaning "making" (cf the Scots term "makar"). We learn this from the entry "Poetry", which, although it could, in Borgesian fashion, itself be exactly as long as the book, confines itself to two and a half pages - as much, you will have noticed, as we get on lesbian poetry. To acknowledge that a poem is a thing made and therefore crafted may come as a surprise to those children who have been encouraged to write poems whose sole requirement is that the lines do not extend to the right-hand edge of the page. Even that, though, involves a necessary constraint - and even that constraint need not apply if we consider prose poetry (whose generally agreed starting point, I learn, is Aloysius Bertrand's "Gaspard de la Nuit" of 1842). But if something is to be made, a manual helps, and this book is it. As these things go, it might not be relatively long - the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001 edition), for example, runs to 28 more volumes than this one - but you'd still think twice before taking it on holiday, and if you dropped it on your foot you'd need a Dyson vacuum cleaner to clear up all the fragments of bone. Pushing 1,500 pages, excluding index, and, boasts the back cover, containing more than 1,000,000 words; I am inclined to take the back cover at its word. The previous edition of this reference work, which came out 20 years ago, is a slim volume by comparison. Its preface, too, had a certain succinctness: "This is a book of knowledge, of facts, theories, questions, and informed judgment, about poetry," it began. This edition is somewhat drier, and places itself more firmly in the academy: "Poetics, the theoretical and practical study of poetry, is one of the oldest disciplines in the west, one of those founded by Aristotle along with ethics, logic, and political science." It is brave of the editors to set out their stall in this fashion, and might go some way to soothing the tempers of those minded to go hrrumph when contemplating the existence of three separate entries dealing with poetry written by or about those who love people of the same gender. (Or one entry on cowboy poetry. Well, why not?) If there is one thing we learn above all else from this book, it is that poetry is something people do everywhere, and have been doing ever since there was language. Being almost half as long again as its predecessor, the fourth edition might be said to be suffering from a kind of university-driven inflation, of the kind which would intimidate or alienate the general reader - the very list of contributors attests to a whole load of universities whose existence may be news to you. (Although all are respectable, and the list is perforce weighted towards the Ivy League - which is nothing to complain about.) But then there has been an awful lot of book-larnin' even in the last two decades, and if the last entry in the 1993 edition, Zulu poetry, simply redirected us to "African poetry", is anyone going to complain that it now has its own entry? We even get to read some: "Umahlom'ehlathini onjengohlanya,/Uhlanya olusemehlwen' amadoda" - "He who armed in the forest, who is like a madman,/The madman who is in full view of the men," an example, we learn, of Parallelism - a technique that exists in poetry from The Kalevala to the Ugarit poets of ancient Syria to . . . well, whenever. And if the entries themselves, being restricted to information tend to be dry (although it is lovely to be reminded in the relevant entry that one of the uses of allusion, according to Christopher Ricks, is to assuage the poet's loneliness), it is because they have to be; there is much to say. I also like the way certain words are abbreviated - hist, contemp, Gr, etc - just as they would have been in your school notes. TS Eliot scorned the idea that poetry could save us, saying that it was like thinking the wallpaper could save us when the walls had crumbled; but if you want to know how that poetic wallpaper gets hung, in a fashion that makes you realise there is an impulse to poetry in us that is universal, there is really no better book than this. To order The Princeton Encylopedia of Poetry and Politics for pounds 27.96 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop - Nicholas Lezard Caption: Captions: Writing on the wall . . . a poem by Andrew Motion adorns Sheffield Hallam University It was James Dyson, inventor of not only a vacuum cleaner but also a hand dryer, who, when struggling to come up with the most abstruse and pointless subject one could study at university level, suggested "French lesbian poetry". How he would love this book. Although, alas, it contains no separate entry for French lesbian poetry, it does have two closely set pages on lesbian poetry (not to mention gay poetry and queer poetry), from which he might learn something, although I doubt he would be inclined to. Which would be a pity if my hunch is correct, for the very word "poetry" comes from the Greek "poesis", meaning "making" (cf the Scots term "makar"). We learn this from the entry "Poetry", which, although it could, in Borgesian fashion, itself be exactly as long as the book, confines itself to two and a half pages - as much, you will have noticed, as we get on lesbian poetry. - Nicholas Lezard.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The go-to resource for students doing research on poetry technique and terminology, the fourth edition of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics features many new and valuable updates from the third edition, in 1993. This edition includes 250 new entries on topics such as Cognitive poetics, Fireside poets, Fractal verse, Gay poetry, Poetry of the indigenous Americas, and Poetry slam. Readers will also find expanded coverage of international poetry (characteristics of, not specific works or poets), with new entries on the poetry of China, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. More than 100 nations, regions, and languages are represented. The work contains more than 1,100 entries, and those on major subjects, such as classical poetics, dramatic poetry, and rhetoric, among others, have all been rewritten to reflect updated scholarship. Entries range in length from one paragraph to several pages. Each entry includes an excellent and extensive bibliography, and the expert cross-referencing makes the work extremely easy to navigate. An index has been added, offering even greater value to the work especially because poets and authors are found within the text of larger topics, not as individual entries. This is an essential purchase for academic and large public libraries, and libraries owning the previous edition will want to replace it with this volume. Highly recommended.--Elliott, Julie Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
With 1,000-plus entries (some 250 of which are new), this edition expands and updates the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, edited by Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan (CH, Oct'93, 31-0674), with a more detailed focus on international traditions not often included in English-language reference tools. Major categories cover regions and languages; terms and concepts; genres and forms; periods, schools, movements; and connections to other disciplines. Overview entries on regions or peoples are supplemented by more specific entries on countries, ethnic groups, and language groups. Some articles from the previous edition have been rewritten. For example, "Negative Capability" deals exclusively with Keats's definition; in the previous edition, later writers were quoted to clarify this concept. Both approaches are valid. For other entries, only bibliographies are updated. Concise references accompany each entry. New entries reflect new movements ("Flarf," "Hip-Hop Poetics") or established movements that did not receive listings before ("New York School," "Nuyorican Poetry"). A glance at the index reveals the impressive range of authors referenced. Technical entries, e.g., on ancient strategies of prosody, will prove too dense for casual readers. This volume will be a valuable addition for universities, and for colleges with MFA programs in creative writing. It is also available in an e-format. For general audiences, John Drury's The Poetry Dictionary (CH, Mar'96, 33-3644) serves as an excellent resource. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above. M. P. Shapiro American University
Library Journal Review
Ever since the first edition of this work, in 1965, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has been a comprehensive and authoritative reference work valued by students, teachers, and poets. Its intention has been to be worldwide in scope, concerning the "history, theory, technique and criticism of poetry from the earliest times to the present." Entries have included terms and concepts; genres and forms; periods, schools, and movements; the poetry of nations, regions, and languages; and poetry in relation to other cultural forms, disciplines, and social practices such as linguistics, religion, and science. This new edition edited by Greene (English & comparative literature, Stanford Univ.) and others includes 1100 entries that range from brief overviews to in-depth essays of 15,000 words, including 250 new entries and many revised and "reconceived" ones. Among the new entries are discussions of the Black Mountain school; ecriture; fractal verse; gay, lesbian, and Nuyorican poetry; poiesis; poetry slams; Bosnian poetry; popular and modern poetry of China; and much more. The bibliographies included with each essay are also fully updated. Contributors come from major colleges and universities worldwide. -VERDICT This edition will be welcomed by all readers of poetry. It provides so many new essays and updates, and, finally, has an index, which is useful as the Encyclopedia does not include entries on individual poets, but rather discusses them in the context of the larger topics to which they are related. Also beneficial is the new page layout that is easier to read and more conducive to browsing, Highly recommended.-Marcia Welsh, Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, NH (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.