Works Cited/ Teacher Bibliography
Birkerts, Sven. The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry. William Morrow and Company, Inc.: New York, 1989.
Sven Birkets has published reviews in most of the major literary magazines in the United States. He has also taught at Harvard University and has been a bookseller. The essays in this collection deal with ways of reading contemporary poetry as well as close readings of particular poems.
Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Poetry, Fourth Edition. Harcourt Brace College Publishers: New York, 1976.
This classic textbook should be on the shelf of every English teacher. It is a comprehensive guide to reading poetry and writing about poetry.
Cotter, Janet M. Invitation to Poetry. Withrop Publishers, Inc.: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971.
In this fairly straightforward textbook, Cotter presents a wide variety of poems with questions to encourage discussion and interpretation.
Davis, William V. Concerning Poetry. 1970. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/cummings/nexttoofcourse.htm
This article was excerpted on the useful site Modern American Poetry.
Fry, Paul. Yale National Initiative July Intensive Seminar, Reading Poetry of All Kinds: Pictures, Places and Things, People. New Haven, July 2005.
Hollander, John. Powers of Thirteen. Atheneum: New York, 1983.
The poems in this collection were not easily found on the internet. If at all possible, the teacher should obtain a copy of this book, especially so that students can view the entire sequence of sonnets of 13 lines.
Hollander, John. Rhyme's Reason, A Guide to English Verse. Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1981.
As mentioned in the unit, this slim volume contains witty verse written by Hollander to explain a variety of forms of poetry.
Johnson, Charles Frederick. Forms of English Poetry. Folcroft Library Editions, 1979. Retrieved July 26, 2005 from the World Wide Web: http://www.sonnets.org/
Mayes, Frances. The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poetry. Harcourt: New York, 2001.
I found this book to be extremely accessible because it was written for non-academics. Mayes loves poetry and wants to share her passion with the general public. Mayes teaches poetry at San Francisco State University and it seems as though the structure of the book might stem from the classes she has taught. There is plenty of advice concerning how to read and understand poetry, but she also offers many exercises for the writer of poetry.
Strand, Mark and Eavan Boland, ed. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. W.W. Norton and Co.: New York, 2000.
Another book that should be on classroom shelves, this is a comprehensive catalog of forms in English poetry, each chapter covering one form and providing examples. Both authors are poets themselves and they each write their own forward, explaining how they became acquainted with poetic form.
Wagner, Jennifer. A Moment's Monument: Revisionary Poetics and the Nineteenth-Century English Sonnet. Associated University Presses: Cranbury, N.J., 1996.
This academic treatise stemmed from Wagner's graduate work. Although the writing is dense, the reader will find many in depth and scholarly approaches to viewing the sonnet.
White, Gertrude and Joan Rosen. A Moment's Monument: The Development of the Sonnet. Charles Scribner's Sons: New York, 1972.
Although probably out of print, if a teacher can get her hands on this collection, she should. It includes a comprehensive sampling of sonnets throughout history and the commentaries written by the editors are very helpful.
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