19 Books on Prosody, Meter and Form

There are a college library’s worth of books devoted to the analysis of poetry but comparatively few on the technical aspects of writing and reading poetry: prosody, meter and form. If you’re a poet who, like me, is endlessly interested in furthering your understanding of the mechanics of writing poetry, here is a list of books focused on how we use our poetic tools and materials.

The authors do not all agree. They present a range of conceptions about meter and the science of the art of poetry.  Some of them offer principles that are clearly proven and ring true to me, but some of them have me violently shaking my head: How can these experts — including poets whose work I admire — get so confused?!

I’m moved to draw up my own opinionated reviews of these books to help you find the best of the lot, and avoid those which could draw you off course or waste your time. I am still working on that but here are some of my preliminary thoughts.

I’ve read about two-thirds of these books so far and I have a few favorites:

• At just under 90 pages, McAuley’s Versification is excellent and accurate — the clearest, most straightforward introduction to meter you will find. I truly didn’t understand meter until I read this book, which poet Joshua Mehigan recommended in a workshop.
• Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook is a succinct and smart introduction to writing poetry. Oliver boils down the most important basic ideas a poet needs to think about when writing. She deftly nudges the writer away from bad habits many of us can fall into when we start writing. A solid textbook on craft for beginning poets, it is a great choice if you are teaching high school or undergraduate students.
• Patterns of Poetry by Miller Williams is a thorough and informative guide to traditional fixed forms — 150 pages and more useful than any other volume I’ve read. It will make you want to experiment and give some of those forms a try. My only caution is the book might be a bit dated; it would be a banger if someone wrote an updated edition to add entries on newer, invented forms of the past half century (for instance, the Golden Shovel).

There are also a few titles I would counsel friends to avoid. But, if you are truly curious, borrow them from a library and read with a critical and skeptical eye.

• Many people consider Paul Fussell’s erudite Poetic Meter and Poetic Form a classic, and I slogged through it hopefully. I found, however, Fussell gets so much wrong about meter, accent, substitutions and variation that his explanations go totally off the rails. This book could easily lead readers astray into fundamental misunderstandings about meter and form that will have to be unlearned.
• Alfred Corn’s The Poem’s Heartbeat makes a valiant effort to elucidate basic principles of versification in English, but the text continuously meanders and hedges with parenthetical exceptions to the author’s observations. The book is filled with concrete analyses of examples that somehow do not add up to meaningful conclusions. I had a hard time finding lessons I could take away from the lengthy deliberations in each chapter. The result is the kind of book folks say needed an editor. You can find more incisive and useful explorations of prosody elsewhere.
• In contrast to Patterns of Poetry, the Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by Strand and Boland was disappointing to me. It covers fewer than a dozen forms and offers only a cursory introduction to each. Though to be fair to its title, it’s an anthology, not a guidebook.
  
• Hollander’s Rhyme’s Reason surprisingly didn’t do much for me. Based on Hollander’s reputation as a scholar of forms, I was hoping for more than a catalog of miscellany about forms, rhyme, and meter. For me, this book failed to deliver much insight on the topic.