Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End

By Barbara Herrnstein Smith

Book Overview

In Poetic Closure, distinguished literary scholar Barbara Herrnstein Smith explores the provocative question: How do poems end? To answer it, Smith examines numerous individual poems and examples of common poetic forms in order to reveal the relationship between closure and the overall structure and integrity of a poem. & First published in 1968, Smith's book remains essential reading in poetic theory."Ranging from Elizabethan lyric through free and syllabic verse and concrete poetry, Poetic Closure is a learned, witty, and richly illustrated study of the behavior of poems. . . . It can be read, enjoyed, studied by people who like reading poetry, including-I would suspect-poets."-Richard M. Elman, New York Times Book Review

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226763420
• ISBN13: 9780226763422
• Release Date: July 1968
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.9" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

A Tremendously Helpful Book

I recently came across this book unexpectedly while browsing library shelves and, drawn by the title, started reading. Quickly I realized I'd need my own copy in order to be able to highlight just about every sentence. Certainly Herrnstein Smith has a dense writing style, and this is a book that requires a person's full attention, but I can honestly say that this is the most useful and thought-provoking book on writing that I've read in years. It demonstrates convincingly what all writers need to know: that the effect of a piece on a good reader is not random but a result of the many particular choices -- word choice, structural choices, choice of sounds and rhythms -- that we make. This book offers the writer (and the teacher of writing) a finely-tuned understanding of what those decisions will mean when the work encounters the reader.

Well worth reading

This is an excellent book, one cited extensively in current studies of narration and closure, even though this text is nearly thirty-five years old. Though it purports to deal with closure in verse, many of its principles are applicable to fiction in general. Torgovnik's *Closure in the Novel* (1981) sets out to do for novels what Herrnstein Smith has done for poetry, but the later book is not nearly so rich in analysis and suggestion. A note on finding it used though. There are currently used copies listed here at very steep prices ($... to $... dollars each). This book is available at used bookstores for more in the neighborhood of $...to $.... There's even a copy listed now through BookFinders at just under $.... It's also available in all university libraries, to tide you over until you locate a copy of your own.