Jerry,
How did I pop into this thread?
Attridge's Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction is not far from my desk, although I don't use it as much as I should. Clive once mentioned another Attridge book, a more advanced study I think, but I don't remember the title.
I should use my thesaurus more than I do: Roget's International Thesaurus, 5<sup>th</sup> edition It's the best I've found. An index in the back of the thesaurus will direct one toward broadly inclusive entries; and every entry separates the "quality" or "content" of an entry into different grammatical forms--noun, verb, adjective, adverb. So if I look up "unimportance," for instance, I'm given 10 entries w/ multiple suggestions each for a noun form, 5 for a verb form, 7 for an adjective form, 1 for an adverb form, and 3 for phrasal forms--each of which has multiple suggestions.
The American Heritage Dictionary, electronic "talking" version is handy. For just $10, you can buy and install this on your system, and you'll never need to wonder how certain odd words are pronounced, because it pronounces them for you! Plus, it allows you to search for rhymes, etc., via wildcard variables. (A question mark substitutes for a wildcard letter; an asterisk substitutes for a string of letters.)
Per Richard's suggestion, I have anthologies and collections of poetry near my desk also. I also keep the Bible handy, plus the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, Plato and Montaigne...(The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame, is invaluable inspiration--having these other sources nearby is also great for breaking up the monotony of writer's block when it happens during the creation of a poem...)
The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory is quite interesting and suggestive, although I've not found it to be 100% accurate and inclusive. Literary Theories: a Reader & Guide, ed. Julian Wolfreys (NYU Press) is also interesting reading but has never helped me with a specific poem... Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science, ed. N. Katherine Hayles (University of Chicago Press) is interesting to the n<sup>th</sup> degree and also quite suggestive. I also keep The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich, nearby: I can't recommend it enough.
Plus, having your own cd collection of music nearby can't hurt.
Lately I've been reading Auden's The Dyer's Hand which is quite fascinating--but his prose is not nearly as good as his poetry. He leaps about; but you'd find a dry humor in his consideration American Poetry and elsewhere through this colleciton of his lectures and essays. (Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is written in much better prose; plus, he and Auden often disagree in their considerations of various Shakespeare plays!)
Of course, these aren't all books on prosody, or "handbooks;" but I've taken a different route, preferring "meter-making arguments" over dry technique. It's good to know technique, but best to find it in successful poems rather than in handbooks. Imo. The perusal and absorption of ideas is the best use for others' writings...
C.
|