The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet WithinComedian and actor Stephen Fry's witty and practical guide, now in paperback, gives the aspiring poet or student the tools and confidence to write and understand poetry. Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. In The Ode Less Travelled, he invites readers to discover the delights of writing poetry for pleasure and provides the tools and confidence to get started. Through enjoyable exercises, witty insights, and simple step-by-step advice, Fry introduces the concepts of Metre, Rhyme, Form, Diction, and Poetics. Most of us have never been taught to read or write poetry, and so it can seem mysterious and intimidating. But Fry, a wonderfully competent, engaging teacher and a writer of poetry himself, sets out to correct this problem by explaining the various elements of poetry in simple terms, without condescension. Fry's method works, and his enthusiasm is contagious as he explores different forms of poetry: the haiku, the ballad, the villanelle, and the sonnet, among many others. Along the way, he introduces us to poets we've heard of but never read. The Ode Less Travelled is not just the survey course you never took in college, it's a lively celebration of poetry that makes even the most reluctant reader want to pick up a pencil and give it a try. |
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Contents
Also by Stephen Fry | |
Stephen Fry | |
Table of Contents | |
Foreword | |
How to Read this Book | |
CHAPTER ONE | |
CHAPTER TWO | |
CHAPTER THREE | |
CHAPTER FOUR | |
Incomplete Glossary of Poetic Terms | |
APPENDIX | |
Acknowledgements | |
Further Reading | |
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Common terms and phrases
accent alliteration amphibrach anapaestic Anglo-Saxon assonance Auden ballad bang beat Byron caesura called classical Clerihew comic consonance couplet course dactyl end-stopped English verse enjambment example eyes feel feet foot four-stress French Greek haiku heart hemistich hexameter Hopkins iamb iambic pentameter Keats kind kyrielle language limerick look loud LUC BAT means metre metrical modern nature never opening ottava rima pair para-rhymes pattern Petrarchan phrase Pindaric pleasure poem poet poet’s poetic Poetry Exercise prosody pyrrhic substitution quatrain refrain rhythm rima rondeau Sapphic sense sestina Shakespeare slant-rhyme song sonnet sound spondee stanza stressed syllables structure syllabic verse syllable count Tennyson ternary tetrameter thee There’s thing thought ti-tum ti-tum-ti titty-tum Titty-tum trochaic trochaic substitution trochee tum-titty unstressed villanelle voice W. H. Auden weak ending weak syllable Wendy Cope words Wordsworth write written wrote