All The Fun's In How You Say A Thing: An Explanation Of Meter & Versification [Paperback]

Timothy Steele (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1999

Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study of versification by one of our best contemporary practitioners of traditional poetic forms. Emphasizing both the coherence and the diversity of English metrical practice from Chaucer’s time to ours, Timothy Steele explains how poets harmonize the fixed units of meter with the variable flow of idiomatic speech. He examines the ways in which poets have used meter, rhyme, and stanza to communicate and enhance meaning. Steele illuminates as well many practical, theoretical, and historical issues in English prosody, without ever losing sight of the fundamental pleasures, beauties, and insights that fine poems offer us. Written lucidly, with a generous selection of helpful scansions and explanations of the metrical effects of the great poets of the English language, All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing is not only a valuable handbook on technique; it is also a wide-ranging study of English verse and a mine of entertaining information for anyone wishing more fully to write, enjoy, understand, or teach poetry.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Timothy Steele is Professor of English at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the author of Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter. His collections of poetry include The Color Wheel and Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970-1986.

Product Details

• Paperback: 377 pages
• Publisher: Ohio University Press; 1st edition (April 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821412604
• ISBN-13: 978-0821412602
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on metrical poetry ever!, May 7, 1999

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: All The Fun's In How You Say A Thing: An Explanation Of Meter & Versification (Paperback)

Timothy Steele's ALL THE FUN'S IN HOW YOU SAY A THING is quite simply the clearest and most comprehensive book I have ever read regarding meter and versification. "Meter," Steele writes with deft simplicity in his introduction, "is organized rhythm. The adjective in this definition is as important as the noun. Most speech is to some degree rhythmical. Common devices of sentence structure, such as antithesis and parallelism, impose rhythm on language. But meter is rhythm ordered in a conscious, specific manner. The metrical unit repeats, and once we feel or recognize, in reading a poem, this scheme of repetition, we can anticipate its continuance as a kind of pulse in the verse." Steele then teaches us how to take a poem's pulse -- how to recognize and appreciate those schemes of repetition -- by carefully analyzing lines by some of the finest metrical poets of the past and present. Though I have long been an avid reader of poetry, the breadth and variety of his examples sent me scurrying to the library to read more. And that's not all Steele does. He clearly illustrates the freedom metrical poets can exercise within the norms of organized rhythm, contrasting, say, the fourth foot trochee in Wordsworth's iambic pentameter line from "The Prelude" In silence through a wood gloomy and still with the third foot trochee in Gwendolyn Brooks' iambic pentameter line from "The Children of the Poor" To laugh or fail, diffident, wonder-starred If you don't happen to know what iambic pentameter is yet, let alone a trochee, you certainly will after you have read this book. Mind you, I have only been referring to a few matters taken up in the first hundred pages! In subsequent chapters, Steele explains the aesthetic pleasures of well-handled enjambments, caesural pauses, elisions, rhymes, and stanzas. To his great credit, Steele never leaves the reader mystified about what these terms mean or why understanding them adds so much to our pleasure when we read fine metrical poetry. I believe this book is destined to become the standard on meter and versification in the English-speaking world for a long time to come. The general reader and the specialist will both find much here of interest -- from how good poets rhyme to how Robert Frost sometimes imitated ancient Greek meter. And aspiring metrical poets of all ages will instantly recognize Steele's book as the "bible" on their favorite subject. I have read a number of rather confusing books about poetry recently, including U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's THE SOUNDS OF POETRY, Pulitzer-prize winner Mary Oliver's RULES FOR THE DANCE, Mary Kinzie's A POET'S GUIDE TO POETRY, and Edward Hirsch's HOW TO READ A POEM AND FALL IN LOVE WITH POETRY. Not one of these books can match the readability, erudition, and profound good sense of Timothy Steele's ALL THE FUN'S IN HOW YOU SAY A THING. It is one of the most fascinating books I have read in years. END

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All the fun really is in how you say a thing., May 29, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: All The Fun's In How You Say A Thing: An Explanation Of Meter & Versification (Paperback)

I am currently a student in an undergraduate creative writing program, and I love (and write) free verse. A previous reviewer criticizes Steele for his "rejection" of free verse; this reason is the basis of his/her low rating of the book. Timothy Steele doesn't have a deep admiration of free verse. He even calls it secondary to the main accentual-syllabic tradition. Although I agree with the previous reviewer about Steele's view of free verse, I do not, however, think this book is lessened by Steele's view.

Steele makes it known from the beginning that the majority of the book will be devoted to iambic verse. I bought this book for an intensive study of form and meter, and the book did not let me down. Not only does Steele cover the principles of scansion and metrical variation, Steele takes the reader into the history of our verse and how it has developed over time. He also explores the development of the English language, rhyme, stanza, elision, and grammar's relation to meter. He doesn't even stop there. He covers much more territory; and, by the end of this book, I feel that I have a firm grasp on formal poetic technique.

The only criticism I have is that Steele does have a tendency to overkill some very basic concepts (the discussion of enjambment goes on page after page, the elision chapter went on for quite a while... it could have been more concise).

If you are looking for a book to give you a thorough, clear, and engaging explanation of formal poetic technique, this is a very helpful book. I can truthfully say after reading it I am more confident of my understanding of meter and versification and that I am also more confident of my skills as a free-verse poet. I highly recommend this book.

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tim Steele's book leaves the others in the dust., October 6, 1999

By 

Leslie L. Monsour (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All The Funs In How You Say A Thing: An Explanation Of Meter & Versification (Hardcover)

All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing is of far greater significance and value to poets and students of poetry than any of the other "how-to" guides, handbooks, manuals and critical studies to date. It is painlessly thorough and brilliantly supported by a rich selection of examples; its author is a master of clarity, eloquence, and graceful scholarship. In 1990, Timothy Steele gave us "Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter." Now, in 1999 he gives us this new treasure. These works are the bookends of the decade. Poetry simply doesn't stand up without them.