Lisa Steinman has taken all the insights of a lively seminar, guided by an expert, and offered the rest of us a chance to eavesdrop. Her book is more than an introduction to poetry; it is also a demonstration of impassioned reading, an immersion in the languages of the lyric. To the casual reader,Steinman explains how poems work; to the critical reader, why they keep working. Ranging over several centuries, styles, genres, and modes of English verse, Invitation to Poetry provides both the tools needed to 'play with poems' and a manual in their use.

For anyone who has ever wantedto become fluent in the language ofpoetry, Invitation to Poetry will provean essential guide. This book:Teaches the serious student how to 'speak poetry' through an in-depth examination of the traditional features and technical vocabulary of poetic language;Examines British and American materials from the sixteenth through to the twentieth centuries in order to give students a sense of a range of different period styles, poetic projects, and strategies;Explicitly examines, questions, and challenges the relationship of poetry to literary periods and canons;Offers the technical tools essential for close reading and interpretation across a broad chronological spectrum.

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Conceptual Syntax: An Introduction to the Way Poems Invite Different Approaches and Position Readers

2 Speaking Poetry: Night Pieces and Intertextual Conversations

3 The Gestures and Subjects of the Sonnet

4 The Uses of Meter and Rhythm in the Sonnet

5 The Form of the Voice: Tone and Diction

6 Modes, Odes, and Odic Gestures

7 What is Pastoral?

8 Traditions, Legacies, and Individual Talents

9 Forests and Trees, or Playing with Poems

Index