Rules for the dance
Subtitle: A handbook for writing and reading metrical verse
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Boston, USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 194
ISBN-13: 9780395850862
Copyright date: 1998
Description: For both readers and writers of poetry, here is a concise and engaging introduction to sound, rhyme, meter, and scansion - and why they matter.

"The dance," in the case of this 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, Mary Oliver helps us understand 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."
Notes: A Mariner Original
Table of contents: label: Part 1
title: The rules; label: 1
title: Breath
pagenum: 3; label: 2
title: Patterns
pagenum: 6; label: 3
title: More about patterns
pagenum: 19; label: 4
title: Design : line length
pagenum: 29; label: 5
title: Release of energy along the line
pagenum: 36; label: 6
title: Design : rhyme
pagenum: 40; label: 7
title: Design : traditional forms
pagenum: 50; label: 8
title: Words on a string
pagenum: 57; label: 9
title: Mutes and other sounds
pagenum: 60; label: 10
title: The use of meter in non-metric verse
pagenum: 62; label: 11
title: Ohs and the ahs
pagenum: 65; label: 12
title: Image-making
pagenum: 67; label: Part 2
title: The dancers one by one; label: 13
title: Style
pagenum: 79; label: Part 3
title: Scansion, and the actual work; label: 14
title: Scansion : reading the metrical poem
pagenum: 87; label: 15
title: Scansion : writing the metrical poem
pagenum: 90; label: 16
title: Yourself dancing : the actual work
pagenum: 93; label: Part 4
title: A universal music; label: 17
title: Then and now 103; title: Envoi
pagenum: 104; label: Part 5
title: An anthology of metrical poems
pagenum: 109