The Art of the Poetic Line Summary and Reviews

The Art of the Poetic Line
by James Longenbach

The Art of the Poetic Line
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Book Summary Information

Author: James Longenbach
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-12-26
ISBN: 1555974880
Number of pages: 120
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9781555974886
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of The Art of the Poetic Line

Book Review: A formalist approach
Summary: 2 Stars

I agree with some of the reviewers that in this book, James Longenbach successfully abandons the notion of 'linebreaks' and replace it with three other smaller categories: annotated line, parsed line and end-stopped line. His approach allows readers (and therefore poets?) to rethink how to cut the lines in their works.

However, I think the book's title is quite misleading. The poetics of a line in a poem of course concerns meter, rhyme, syllables and stress. However, there is more. Longenbach spends the whole book analyzing the form of poetry, dissecting some of his examples from a structuralist point of view (and interesting, he does not mention stanza breaks). He has entirely neglected imagery and perhaps the part of speech of particular ending words in the poems matter even more. He limits his analysis from the formalist perspective and undermines the importance of lexical and thematic issues.

Furthermore, I don't agree with all of his poem analyses in this little book; some of them sound quite 'forced' to me.

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