Thematic Guide to American Poetry [Hardcover]

Allan Burns (Author)

Price:	CDN$ 64.92 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Temporarily out of stock.
Order now and we'll deliver when available. We'll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information. Your account will only be charged when we ship the item.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

Product Details

Hardcover: 328 pages
Publisher: Greenwood Press (September 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0313314624
ISBN-13: 978-0313314629
Product Dimensions: 24.6 x 15.6 x 2.9 cm
Shipping Weight: 635 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,789,827 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

From Booklist

The latest addition to the Greenwood series of thematic guides to literature for students features 21 narrative essays on such broad themes in American poetry as "Art and Beauty," "Family Relations," "Loss," and "War." The essays are arranged alphabetically, and each begins with a theme-related quotation followed by a chronologically arranged discussion of how the theme is treated differently across individual poems. On average, chapters are 12 pages long and discuss 12 individual poems. Each chapter concludes with a list of anthologies in which each poem appears (abbreviations correspond closely with Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry in Anthologies). Brief biographical sketches of all the poets covered appear in the back of the volume along with a further reading list and an index.

The aim of the guide is to "help students better understand what poems are saying, specifically against the wider backdrop of American poetic traditions." The narratives for each poem are pithy and clear, discussing only generally how the poem portrays the theme under discussion. Although author Burns, an English professor, tends to favor some of the same poets (250 poems are represented, but only 86 poets), the only criteria for inclusion is high-quality poetry of the U.S. that is readily available in standard anthologies. The limited space in a single volume necessarily requires somewhat arbitrary exclusiveness, but the poems that are chosen are well explicated. In essays that allude to poems discussed in other chapters, a referential note is made.

Currently, although plenty of explication is available for individual landmark poems, guides that discuss American poems through broad-based thematic essays are scarce. Indexes like Columbia Granger's only have very literal subject indexing and cannot be solely relied upon. Thematic Guide to American Poetry provides a valuable outlet for students or teachers looking for poems on a given theme and is recommended for high-school, academic, and public libraries. RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

.,."well organized, fills a niche in the literature, and will be especially useful for educators and librarians. Recommended. General and undergraduate readers."-Choice

See all Product Description

Inside This Book (Learn More)

Explore More
Concordance