Blank Verse: A Guide to Its History and UseBlank verse--unrhymed iambic pentameter--is familiar to many as the form of Shakespeare's plays and Milton's Paradise Lost. Since its first use in English in the sixteenth century, it has provided poets with a powerful and versatile metrical line, enabling the creation of some of the most memorable poems of Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Frost, Stevens, Wilbur, Nemerov, Hecht, and a host of others. A protean meter, blank verse lends itself to lyric, dramatic, narrative, and meditative modes; to epigram as well as to epic. Blank Verse is the first book since 1895 to offer a detailed study of the meter's technical features and its history, as well as its many uses. Robert B. Shaw gives ample space and emphasis to the achievements of modern and postmodern poets working in the form, an area neglected until now by scholarship. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 45
... light in sound , a sound - like power in light , Rhythm in all thought , and joyance every where [ ... ] ( 26-29 ) or when Wordsworth in " Tintern Abbey ” describes " that serene and blessed mood " -in which the breath of this corporeal ...
... light . ( 10 , 1-6 ) The language , which in the earlier poem seemed to be clanking about in armor , here trembles and glitters in consort with the “ windy light " it evokes . " Autumn Shade " is one of the most eloquent poems written ...
... light touch to the contentious topic of gender differences and neatly makes the point that there are things about women that Solomon despite all his wisdom will never trouble to learn . Another piece , “ The Power of Music to Disturb ...
Contents
Before the Twentieth Century 333 | 82 |
After Modernism | 161 |
Writing Blank Verse Today | 244 |
Copyright | |
2 other sections not shown