The Poem and the Journey: And Sixty Poems to Read Along the Way - Softcover

Padel, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099492946 ISBN 13: 9780099492948

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2008

Synopsis

Ruth Padel is an award-winning poet who has also become renowned as an energetic, generous and thought-provoking guide to reading poetry. Her "52 Ways of Looking at a Poem", with its lively overview of contemporary writing and eye-opening readings of individual poems, is indispensable for anyone who writes poetry, teaches it, or simply wants to enjoy it. In her new book, she uses sixty poems by some of our finest poets to look at the idea of the journey, through literature and through life. As Padel makes clear in her fascinating introduction, today's debates about how accessible a poem should be are poetry's older tradition. To rhyme or not to rhyme? The Elizabethans fought over that one, while the Greeks couldn't agree about whether poetry should be dumbed down or remain the preserve of the elite. Combining her training as a Classicist with her insights as a poet, Padel highlights the ways in which the best poets now find a balance between rhymed formal verse and modernism's freer styles, using a traditional, formal craft to convey genuinely felt, up-to-the-minute experience. In an increasingly unstable world, she argues, we need poetry more than ever to help us to see afresh and understand the journeys of our lives.

About this title

About the Author:

Ruth Padel is a prizewinning poet, Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Zoological Society of London, and first Resident Writer at Somerset House, London. Her collections include Rembrandt Would Have Loved You, Voodoo Shop and The Soho Leopard, all shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and more recently Darwin: A Life in Poems, shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. Highly acclaimed for her nature writing in a book about conservation, Tigers in Red Weather, and her novel, Where the Serpent Lives, she has also published books on contemporary poetry, including 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem and The Poem and the Journey. In 2014, Ruth Padel is the first Writer in Residence at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and is recording her experiences in her blog at http://www.ruthpadel.com/blog/.

Review:

"It's a generous, likable, diligent and smart piece of work" -- Andrew Motion * Guardian * "Ruth Padel is Virgil in the 'Inferno' of poetry. She guides the reader gently and deftly on the journey... This is much more than a book about poetry, this is a handbook for living!" -- Fiona Shaw "Brilliant... Padel draws on a huge range of references to make a powerful case for poetry as a living art form" * Independent * "As a writer you would probably choose Ruth Padel as your ideal reader. Her eye misses very little of the nudging and winking that goes on in a poem, and she seems able to tune into the silent music of text on the page...she finds more than most to engage with and enjoy" -- Simon Armitage "An enlivening, illuminating book, lucid, accessible and probing" * The Times *

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0099492946
• ISBN 13: 9780099492948
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384