The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems

This product was very helpful. My professor actually required it for an intro to poetry writing class, and the text is very well organized and understandable. It helps you to write all kinds of poems from free verse, to sonnets, and helps break down certain tools and poetic devices used in all poems. It's definatly a well written guide to poetry, and all of the poems used as examples are very interesting and fun to read!

As a poet who has been writing poetry for about 5 years, I find this book very helpful. It is not only a guide to writing poetry, but to reading poetry as well. The book includes many selections of inspiration poems that coincide with the topic covered in each chapter. A great guide for beginning poets and for those who desire to increase their skills in reading and writing poetry.
'kansaspoet'

This book has made poetry accessible to me for the first time in my life. The descriptions and explanations are easy to understand and are, on many occasions, lyrical. The author has helped to unravel some of the mystery of poetry for me. Indeed, I am now beginning, from the varied pieces of poetry in the book, to identify particular poets whose work I will explore further. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has always felt daunted and intimidated by poetry.

Poetry is a very personal art form, and there will always be divergent reactions to the same work. I have read several textbooks and anthologies. This may not be the strongest text or the broadest anthology, yet taken as a whole it is the most inspiring book about poetry I have ever read. This is a text that stirs the readers emotions to someting other than boredom. It was refreshing to find a text that admits that the scansion of a poem is not set in concrete but can be open to interpretation. The selection of poems is broad and avoids the flood of dated political "poems" that have dominated college texts in years past. Any professor would do well to include this in their book list. I am amazed that any teacher would think a course in poetry or literature could be taught from only one text.

I used this book as a last minute replacement in teaching a collegiate, first year poetry class -- the anthology I intended to use had it's publication date pushed back. As such, I used it essentially sight unseen, figuring the low price would cover my not having seen it first hand. But even with the price I was terribly embarrassed for using it.

This is a miserably constructed work. Its discussions of poetry are ridiculously shallow, frequently to the point of being incorrect or misleading. It is written at the level of someone whose knowledge of poetry and poetics was gained only through reading other poor anthologies, at the level of someone who could not ever successfully demonstrate any sophistication or depth of knowledge in the field. I would be embarrassed by this book even if I was teaching _high school_ freshmen. As far as the art of poetry is concerned, as far as even _basic_ knowledge of poetry is concerned, this is less than drivel. And all the worse because of how deceiving it can be. If someone read this with no knowledge of poetry and spoke from it as a source of authority, they would frequently find themselves looking quite foolish. To me that is an egregious fault.

Yet more bleakly hilarious than how poor are the discussions is how bad the writing is. There are many places where the writing looks like it was edited from five pages to one paragraph, taking two sentences a page to make the condensation. And too often I came upon places where the poor writing created misconceptions. You would think that someone who makes their living as an author would have a little more pride in their work than permitting this to be published in their name. The writing is bad enough that I now have no desire to ever crack one of Mayes's novels.

Just to say, as an anthology, it is tolerable. There is a decent selection of poems for the price. (And it is only the price that makes it tolerable.) But in using it you will quickly find that while there may be a variety of authors, there is not a great variety of styles -- that is, there might be one or two representatives of a style or technique, but rarely enough to create a demonstration toward understanding. I was often (in my class) frustrated by not being able to find a representative of styles of verse that should be present in number in any anthology. Too much of it is contemporary, and too much of that rather unremarkable poetry. There is not nearly enough non-contemporary poetry to name itself a "field guide," not nearly enough variety to even be considered a decent sampling of the art form.

Stay away from it. It is not well crafted. For the errors and misconceptions you should definitely look elsewhere -- if you look to this to teach you something, what it will teach you (how little that is) will be error-ridden. Spend the extra money and get something of value. As someone who claims to love poetry, Mayes has done the art a great wrong, mocking it by speaking of it carelessly, revealing through her shallow presentation how little she's truly devoted herself to poetry's secrets and graces.