Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver

Rules for the Dance

A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse

Mary Oliver

HarperCollins · Print & ebook · July 27, 1998

Pulitzer-prize winning poet and National Book Award winner, Mary Oliver, provides a graceful manual on the mechanics of poetical composition.?

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Who it’s for
Explore the craft of metrical verse through sound, rhythm, and close attention to language.
Themes
Poetry as conscious craft, Sound and rhythm in verse, Assonance and alliteration
Genres
Poetry Writing, Poetry Criticism, Writing Composition

About this book

Pulitzer-prize winning poet and National Book Award winner, Mary Oliver, provides a graceful manual on the mechanics of poetical composition.? Poets and those who simply want to understand poetry will enjoy this study of poetry as a conscious craft.? Breaking down the basics with examples from well-known poems, Oliver shows how the dimensions of sound and rhythm (musicality) and lyrical words (assonance, alliteration, etc.) can combine to make powerful verse.

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She enables readers to "enter the thudding deeps and the rippling shallows of sound-pleasure and rhythm-pleasure that intensify both the poem's narrative and its ideas."

How Verse Moves

Explore the craft of metrical verse through sound, rhythm, and close attention to language.

Come here for

  • A clear look at how musicality and lyrical words shape poems
  • Examples from well-known poems to illuminate the craft

Expect

  • A graceful study of poetry as conscious craft
  • Attention to sound and rhythm, and how they deepen a poem’s ideas

Where it sits

Poetry Writing95%
Poetry Criticism41%
Writing Composition28%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Language Arts
  • Poetry Criticism
  • British & Irish Poetry
Authors
Mary Oliver
Publisher
HarperCollins
Published
July 27, 1998
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Poetry as conscious craft · Sound and rhythm in verse · Assonance and alliteration
Reading lane
Language Arts