The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Fifth Edition

The Book of Forms, fifth edition, is intended as an up-to-theminutetext and reference work for students and teachers of poetry ingeneral, but for poets in particular. Although the emphasis is and hasalways been on the forms of poetry, this volume contains all theinformation essential to a study of verse and verse techniques fromclassical times through the Middle Ages to the present.The Book of Forms now has two companion volumes: The Book ofLiterary Terms: The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, LiteraryCriticism, and Scholarship, which uses the same codification andsystematization for all of the literary genres other than poetry, andThe Book of Dialogue: How to Write Effective Conversation inFiction, Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry, which has appeared inEurope in translation and various editions since its first appearancein 1989 as Dialogue. All three titles appear in uniform editions.-- Now in its fifth edition, The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics continues to be the go-to reference and guide for students, teachers, and critics. A companion for poets from novice to master, The Book of Forms has been called "the poet's bible" for more than fifty years. Filled with both common and rarely heard of forms and prosodies, Turco's engaging style and apt examples invite writers to try their hands at exploring forms in ways that challenge and enrich their work. Revised for today's poet, the fifth edition includes the classic rules of scansion and the useful Form-Finder Index alongside new examples of terms and prose that are essential to the study of all forms of poetry and verse. As Turco writes in the introduction, "It should go without saying that the more one knows how to do, the more one can do."