Rules for the Dance

by Oliver, Mary

• ISBN13: 9780395850862
• ISBN10: 039585086X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-07-27
• Publisher: Mariner Books

Summary

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance," wrote Alexander Pope. "The dance," in the case of Oliver's brief and luminous book, refers to the interwoven pleasures of sound and sense to be found in some of the most celebrated and beautiful poems in the English language, from Shakespeare to Edna St. Vincent Millay to Robert Frost. With a poet's ear and a poet's grace of expression, Oliver shows what makes a metrical poem work - and enables readers, as only she can, 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."

Author Biography

Mary Oliver is one of the most celebrated and best-selling poets in America. Her books include Red Bird; Our World; Thirst; Blue Iris; New and Selected Poems, Volume One; and New and Selected Poems, Volume Two. She has also published five books of prose, including Rules for the Dance and, most recently, Long Life. She lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: THE RULES	3	(76)
1. Breath	3	(3)
2. Patterns	6	(13)
3. More About Patterns	19	(10)
4. Design: Line Length	29	(7)
5. Release of Energy Along the Line	36	(4)
6. Design: Rhyme	40	(10)
7. Design: Traditional Forms	50	(7)
8. Words on a String	57	(3)
9. Mutes and Other Sounds	60	(2)
10. The Use of Meter in Non-Metric Verse	62	(3)
11. The Ohs and the Ahs	65	(2)
12. Image-Making	67	(12)
PART TWO: THE DANCERS ONE BY ONE	79	(8)
13. Style	79	(8)
PART THREE: SCANSION, AND THE ACTUAL WORK	87	(16)
14. Scansion: Reading the Metrical Poem	87	(3)
15. Scansion: Writing the Metrical Poem	90	(3)
16. Yourself Dancing: The Actual Work	93	(10)
PART FOUR: A UNIVERSAL MUSIC	103	(6)
17. Then and Now	103	(1)
Envoi	104	(5)
PART FIVE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF METRICAL POEMS	109	(80)
Permissions	189	(1)
Index	190