While it's hardly the most traveled of literary destinations, poetry has suffered from no shortage of guidebooks. Still, these poetic baedekers tend to get bogged down in terminology and historical hairsplitting, while the actual music gets lost in the shuffle. We should be thankful, then, for Robert Pinsky's brief, wonderfully readable volume, in which he zooms in on verse as acoustic artifact: "When I say to myself a poem by Emily Dickinson or George Herbert, the artist's medium is my breath. The reader's breath and hearing embody the poet's words. This makes the art physical, intimate, vocal, and individual."

Not that Poet Laureate Pinsky gets vague or touchy-feely on us. Poetry, like God, is in the details, and the author starts with the building blocks, the amino acids, of verse: accent and duration. Even the most jaded of readers will benefit from his syllable-by-syllable examination of Thomas Campion's "Now Winter Nights Enlarge" and Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning." Moving on through discussions of syntax and line, meter and rhyme (or lack thereof), Pinsky enlists both the usual suspects (Shakespeare, Frost, Hardy, Eliot, Bishop) and some less customary ones (Gilbert & Sullivan, Louise Gluck, and the splendid James McMichael) to make his points. These poems are, in some sense, teaching tools for the author. Yet even his on-the-fly commentary causes us to see them in a new light. Here he is, for example, on the near-monotonous minimalism of W.C. Williams's "To a Poor Old Woman": "The poem dramatizes the taking in of a supposedly ordinary experience, and the playful, almost hectoring repetitions are like an effective sermon in praise of simplicity." The Sounds of Poetry is no less effective a sermon. It leaves your ear (and your heart) attuned to the pleasurable play of poetic language and persuades you that hearing is, indeed, believing. --James Marcus


From Library Journal
Though this book is written by a celebrated poet (the poet laureate of the Untied States), there is little to be gleaned from it. The work is organized in five chapters about the mechanics of poetry: accent, syntax, terms, chimes, and some notes on blank and free verse. This title, oddly written in a humorless, academic first person for the novice, tells us more about what Pinsky thinks than about the subtle merging of the oral and written craft of English verse. Perhaps straining to make the mysteries of poetry accessible, the passages define, advise, and recommend like a set of cobbled lecture notes. Better to stick with Alfred Corn's quality guide, The Poem's Heartbeat (LJ 4/1/97). Pinsky's endeavor is a disappointing enterprise.-?Scott Hightower, NYU/Gallatin, New YorkCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Atlantic Monthly, Francis X. Rocca
[The Sounds of Poetry] should go a long way toward reuniting poetry and the public.... an achievement for which there is surprisingly little precedent: an authoritative yet accessible introduction to the tools of the poet's trade that can be read with profit by the serious student and the amateur alike.


From Booklist
Poet laureate Pinsky's mission in this guide is to enhance poetry readers' pleasure. Poems spring from our intuitive response to sound patterns, the instinctive grasp, for instance, of how an accented syllable alters the meaning of a word, and Pinsky hopes to elucidate the vocal aspect of the poet's art without diminishing its magic. To that end, he avoids theoretical explanations and ushers his readers directly into the heart of poems by a broad spectrum of masters, ranging from Ben Johnson to William Carlos Williams, using their work as prime examples of the workings of pitch and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, and blank, or iambic, and free verse, poetic techniques that "achieve meaning and feeling." By bringing his passion for the sound of language--so evident in his own poems--to his expert interpretations of the work of others, Pinsky cracks open the glass case that seems to separate poetry from everyday language, allowing the song of each poem to ring bright and clear. Donna Seaman


Anthony Day, Los Angeles Times
Illuminates a crucial fragment of American history


Review
"A painless journey through the foothills of poetry . . . One of the marvelous things about this book is Pinsky's deep recognition that a poem is successful not because of the poet's ambition or sense of purpose but because of the effect it creates in the reader, and in many readers over time"--Graham Christian, Boston Phoenix



The Nation, James Longenbach
Though it purports to be an introduction merely to the sounds of poetry--accent, line, syntax, rhyme--the book is not only interesting but suspenseful to read. Without discussing the meaning of poems, Pinsky has created a keenly idiosyncratic account of the place of poetry in our time.


Review
"A painless journey through the foothills of poetry . . . One of the marvelous things about this book is Pinsky's deep recognition that a poem is successful not because of the poet's ambition or sense of purpose but because of the effect it creates in the reader, and in many readers over time"--Graham Christian, Boston Phoenix



Book Description
The Poet Laureate's clear and entertaining account of how poetry works.

"Poetry is a vocal, which is to say a bodily, art," Robert Pinsky declares in The Sounds of Poetry. "The medium of poetry is the human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into signifying sounds in the larynx and the mouth. In this sense, poetry is as physical or bodily an art as dancing."

As Poet Laureate, Pinsky is one of America's best spokesmen for poetry. In this fascinating book, he explains how poets use the "technology" of poetry--its sounds--to create works of art that are "performed" in us when we read them aloud.

He devotes brief, informative chapters to accent and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, blank and free verse. He cites examples from the work of fifty different poets--from Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert to W. C. Williams, Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, C. K. Williams, Louise Glück, and Frank Bidart.

This ideal introductory volume belongs in the library of every poet and student of poetry.



About the Author
Robert Pinsky is Poet Laureate of the United States. FSG published The Inferno of Dante in 1994 and The Figured Wheel in 1996. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University and lives in Newton Corner, Massachusetts.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

As Poet Laureate, Pinsky is one of America's best spokesmen for poetry, In this book, writing plainly and specifically, for general readers as well as for poets, he explains in detail how the sounds of poetry embody the work of art that is "performed" in us when we read it aloud. Pinsky devotes clear, informative chapters to the sonic elements of poetry: accent and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, blank verse and free verse. He illustrates these with examples from the work of some 50 poets — from Shakespeare, Milton, and Emily Dickinson to William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Glock, C.K. Williams, and Frank Bidart.

SYNOPSIS

Explaining the principles of poetry (diction, syntax, accent and stress, and verse form), Pinsky cites the work of 50 poets, from Shakespeare and John Donne to Elizabeth Bishop and Frank Bidart, to show how they have used sound—the "technology" of poetry—to create works of art that are "performed" in us when we read them aloud.

FROM THE CRITICS

Booknews

American poet, translator, and critic explains in nontechnical terms how the sounds of poetry embody the work of art that is performed in readers when they read it aloud. He discusses accent and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, and blank verse and free verse and illustrates them with the work of famous poets of the English language.
Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Oregon

Joshua Weiner - Tikkun

Pinsky's primer is like no other — clear, thorough, provocative, and alive with the wit and passionate engagement of a great teacher, The Sounds of Poetry is sure to remain the most inspiring and most serviceable book of its kind for a long time to come.

James Logenbach - The Nation

Pinsky hears America singing...Deeply personal...beautifully perceptive...Pinsky has created a keenly idiosyncratic acccount of the place of poetry in our time.

Anthony Day

Illuminates a crucial fragment of American history.
#151;Los Angeles Times

Graham Christian

A painless journey through the foothills of poetry . . . One of the marvelous things about this book is Pinsky's deep recognition that a poem is successful not because of the poet's ambition or sense of purpose but because of the effect it creates in the reader, and in many readers over time.
#151;Boston Phoenix

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