How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse Paperback – March 27, 2018

I’ve use d Foster’s other books over the years and highly recommend any/all of them for students and teachers who need a conversational approach to literary analysis understanding of the crafting of the patterns that writers use. I highly recommend these books; easy and fun to read.

FANTASTIC book for people wanting to brush up on their poetry comprehension skills. This book covers a wide range of topics, from general notes to more intermediate topics. I’d say this is for anyone who wants that good ol’ reading comprehension that everyone’s been talking about but feel to overwhelmed on where to start.

If you have read the other Foster books on literature and novels, then the set-up and arrangement of this newest title (March 2018) will not surprise you or disrupt the flow of your reading into the ideas presented.Foster provides interesting commentary in the introduction that would be well-suited for the upper level grades as an re-introduction of sorts to poetry and poetic forms. Foster writes, "I think that for most people, however, is the matter isn't so much not liking poetry as feeling somehow overmatched, as if it were a contest and the other side had better equipment and more skill" (3). For the rest of the introduction, Foster presents poetry in its bare-bones form and puts the would-be poetry reader at ease for presenting what both bring to the table by way of text and reader.In "Sounds of Sense" and "Sound Beyond Sense," Foster brings the reader gently back to poetry if the reader is patient with returning to some of that early learning in meter and rhyme and literary devices. For the upper grade reader, these elements of the book may serve well as have the other two books mentioned prior. Early on within this book, however, I note that that Foster is reserved in the examples used and they seem more accessible and familiar and I have to think that this is due in part to the potential fear and trepidation poetry brings along with it.The rest of the book presents like the literature and novels with quippy titles followed by a short chapter which includes a definition of the term, and exploration of the term, and samples from the larger poetry community.As more and more classroom teachers seek out nonfiction text for the classroom, this one would be very nice not only as a primer for poetry but as an informing vehicle for the sounds, techniques, and moves we seek in prose.

My dad was educated as an English teacher; I’m a mathematician. My dad used to taunt me with the Chaucer quoted in this book. In my dotage, I thought I’d learn about poetry. This is a great book but I’m afraid I’m a hopeless poet.

If you want an accessible view into the world and history of poetry, this is the book. It's thorough, informative, and entertaining.

The book does not teach poetry. Rather, it gives bits and pieces of things to consider about poetry. The examples were few, not enough. As I mentioned, The Odd Less Traveled by Stephen Try is ten times this book by Foster. And I like foster, have purchased and read all his books.

Although I'm well read, poetry escapes me: I now know why - it's another language! Foster's book has opened my eyes to the grammar of poetry and given me greater understanding. I highly recommend this book

A thorough guide to poetry. I suspect that everyone could be reminded of some detail of how to read poetry in this book. It does exactly what it should