- Discusses what poetry is, and what it is for, with examples from both contemporary and ancient poets
- Examines the contemporary debates surrounding the value and universality of poetry.
- From distinguished modern poet and literary critic, Bernard O’Donoghue.
- Part of the Very Short Introductions series – over nine million copies sold worldwide
Source: Poetry – A Very Short Introduction by Bernard O’Donoghue
Bernard O’Donoghue’s Poetry: A Very Short Introduction explores what it is that constitutes a poem and what are its purposes. He explores the various applications, the devices and their various contexts. In the end, he concludes with the following:
Having started with grand claims for poetry, by Shelley, Wallace Stevens, and others, on grounds of public utility, this brief consideration of what poetry is has encountered a series of recurrent features. Its primary effect seems to be to satisfy what the reader or hearer wants by surprising them in some way. It is never the statement of the obvious. It may be abnormal in language or in opinion or in organization. But it must not be abnormal for the sake of it; it must not be perverse, because its endeavour is to expose the truth in some sense that is not obvious. It works in the service of reality. It is in that sense that it is an enhancement of life as we end where we began.
Source: Poetry – A Very Short Introduction by Bernard O’Donoghue
Throughout, O’Donoghue ties together various points of view and perspectives, often contradictory. It had me thinking again about Stanley Fish’s essay ‘How to Recognise a Poem When You See One’, in which he argues that it is the act of reading and the associated attention which creates the poem:
In other words, acts of recognition, rather than being triggered by formal characteristics, are their source. It is not that the presence of poetic qualities compels a certain kind of attention but that the paying of a certain kind of attention results in the emergence of poetic qualities.
Source: ‘How to Recognise a Poem When You See One’ in Is There a Text in This Class? by Stanley Fish
In the end, O’Donoghue’s book provides an thought provoking introduction that asks as many questions. It felt like anytime that he made a statement of sorts that there was also a but that followed it. Whether it be Goethe’s world literature, discussion of rhythm and the domination of lyrical poems compared to say epics.