In The Art of Poetry, Shira Wolosky provides a dazzling introduction to an art whose emphasis on verbal music, wordplay, and dodging the merely literal makes it at once the most beguiling and most challenging of literary forms. A uniquely comprehensive, step-by-step introduction to poetic form, The Art of Poetry moves progressively from smaller units such as the word, line, and image, to larger features such as verse forms and voice. In fourteen engaging, beautifully written chapters, Wolosky explores in depth how poetry does what it does while offering brilliant readings of some of the finest lyric poetry in the English and American traditions. Both readers new to poetry and poetry veterans will be moved and enlightened as Wolosky interprets work by William Shakespeare, John Donne, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, and others. The book includes a superb two-chapter discussion of the sonnet's form and history, and represents the first poetry guide to introduce gender as a basic element of analysis. In contrast to many existing guides, which focus on selected formal aspects like metrics or present definitions and examples in a handbook format, The Art of Poetry covers the full landscape of poetry's subtle art while showing readers how to comprehend a poetic text in all its dimensions. Other special features include Wolosky's consideration of historical background for the developments she discusses, and the way her book is designed to acquaint or reacquaint readers with the core of the lyric tradition in English. Lively, accessible, and original, The Art of Poetry will be a rich source of inspiration for students, general readers, and those who teach poetry.

The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem

Literature & Fiction

Wolosky, Shira

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

The Riddles of Harry Potter: Secret Passages and Interpretive Quests

The Riddles of Harry Potter draws readers into the deeper meanings of these phenomenally successful books, arguing that they launch and pursue interpretive quests in an ongoing effort to understand patterns and their attendant meanings, implications, and consequences.

Teen & Young Adult

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War

History

Yale University Press

Feminist Theory Across Disciplines (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)

Defying traditional definitions of public and private as gendered terms, and broadening discussion of women’s writing in relation to feminist work done in other fields, this study addresses American women’s poetry from the seventeenth to late-twentieth century. Engaging the fields of literary criticism, anthropology, psychology, history, political theory, religious culture, cultural studies, and poetics, this study provides entry into some of the founding feminist discussions across disciplines, moving beyond current scholarship to pursue an interpretation of feminism’s defining interests and assumptions in the context of women’s writing. The author emphasizes and explores how women’s writing expresses their active participation in community and civic life, emerging from and shaping a woman’s selfhood as constituted through relationships, not only on the personal level, but as forming community commitments. This distinctive formation of the self finds expression in women’s voices and other poetic forms of expression, with the aesthetic power of poetry itself bringing different arenas of human experience to bear on each other in mutual interrogation and reflection. Women poets have addressed the public world, directly or through a variety of poetic structures and figures, and in doing so they have defined and expressed specific forms of selfhood engaged in and committed to communal life.

Feminist Theory Across Disciplines: Feminist Community and American Women's Poetry (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)

Routledge

This book examines an ambivalence to language deeply rooted in Western culture, as seen in the writings of Eliot, Beckett, and Celan, and in the context of age-old metaphysical biases against body, history, time, and the mundane as these continue to shape our system of values and moral commitments..

Language Mysticism: The Negative Way of Language in Eliot, Beckett, and Celan

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Stanford University Press

The Riddles of Harry Potter draws readers into the deeper meanings of these phenomenally successful books, arguing that they launch and pursue interpretive quests in an ongoing effort to understand patterns and their attendant meanings, implications, and consequences.

There are a number of anthologies of nineteenth-century American women poets in print, but these tend to offer a very small sample of poems from a very large number of writers, often based around a specific topical concern. The Toby anthology, compiled and edited by Professor Shira Wolosky, will instead present a substantial number of texts by a select group of poets - focusing in depth on the major voices of that time. This anthology will thus allow the reader the opportunity to engage more deeply with the poetry; to see the range within each poet's writings, and the relation among the poets. An introductory essay will identify central concerns, historical backgrounds, evolving patterns and poetic issues, as marked through the course of the century. The work of these poets provides a gripping view of the creativity of nineteenth-century American women that has been until recently almost entirely lost to literary history. Supremely relevant to today's readers, this is poetry that began the efforts at the redefinition of self, of America, and of womanhood that continues to touch the lives and thoughts of so many today.  The poets are: Lydia Sigourney, Julia Ward Howe, Francis Harper, Helen Hunt Jackson, Emily Dickinson, Alice & Phoebe Carey, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Emma Lazarus and Charlotte Gilman.

Major Voices in 19th Century American Women's Poetry

Literary

Toby Press

An introductory essay will identify central concerns, historical backgrounds, evolving patterns and poetic issues, as marked through the course of the century. The work of these poets provides a gripping view of the creativity of nineteenth-century American women that has been until recently almost entirely lost to literary history. Supremely relevant to today's readers, this is poetry that began the efforts at the redefinition of self, of America, and of womanhood that continues to touch the lives and thoughts of so many today.

Poetry

Lake Union Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wolosky, Shira. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wolosky, Shira

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wolosky, Shira. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem

The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem

The Riddles of Harry Potter: Secret Passages and Interpretive Quests

Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War

Feminist Theory Across Disciplines: Feminist Community and American Women's Poetry (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)

Language Mysticism: The Negative Way of Language in Eliot, Beckett, and Celan

Feminist Theory Across Disciplines (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)

The Riddles of Harry Potter: Secret Passages and Interpretive Quests

Major Voices in 19th Century American Women's Poetry

Major Voices in 19th Century American Women's Poetry