The Poet's Handbook [Paperback]

Judson Jerome (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1986

Judson Jerome's years of experience as both a poet and a teacher come together to expertly guide you through the poetry writing process. You'll learn how to merge mechanics with art to produce poetry that will endure. You'll discover the meanings and uses of a wide variety of poetic terms, illustrated with the works of such poets as Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, and John Gardner. Jerome also includes a versification chart, an index to poetry terms, and indexes to poems/poets quoted in the book, making this book equally valuable for quick reference or in-depth study.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Writers Digest Books (March 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898792193
• ISBN-13: 978-0898792195
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,980,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The first book that a budding poet should read. Period., October 21, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Poet's Handbook (Paperback)

I have been a poet for over twenty years. This is the first
book that I give to people who say to me, "I'd like to
write some poetry. Where do I start?" It is a technical
manual which explains in clear and easily understood
language the tools of poetry. Jerome defines poetry as
"metrical writing" and defines all the different types
of metre and shows you how they can be used. If you were
a budding carpenter this book would explain
the parts of the hammer and the adze and the different
types of nails and woods and how to make right-angled
corners and how to make strong and lasting constructions.
They say that genius is 99% perspiration and 1%
inspiration. This book shows you how to work for that 99%.

Once you have mastered this book, there are others that
are useful for the toolbox (the Princeton Encyclopedia
of Poetry, The New Book of Forms [Turco], How does a poem
mean? [Ciardi]) and others that will help you find that 1%,
but this book is the book that will move you from someone
who has poetic thoughts to someone who is a poet. I
grant www.amazon.com permission to use this review at their
website.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent source for writers, February 18, 2000

By 

G. Taylor "unconvinced" (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Poet's Handbook (Paperback)

This is an excellent book on the "nuts & bolts" of form poetry with a sensible explanation of "free" form. Jerome is of the school that you must first understand poetic form before you can toss it aside for the less demanding free verse. I strongely agree. A lot of published poetry today is senseless whining, hardly related to the hard work of proven forms.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Meter, and Meaning vs. Nonmeaning, May 21, 2005

By 

Struggling Poet (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Poet's Handbook (Paperback)

I have mixed felings about this book *and* Judson Jerome. I first read The Poet's Handbook over 20 years ago (around 1983). At that time it was my bible. I also loved, and still love, John Ciardi's book "How Does a Poem Mean." Those are the two books I have always recommmended to aspring poets. Now I have reservations about Jerome's book.

I do owe a debt of gratitude to Judson Jerome. I think his conservative approach led me to be less easily satisfied with my early attempts at poetry and to strive harder for excellence. He taught me a sense of tradition and impressed upon me the importance of always keeping the reader firmly in mind. He taught me the importance of mastering the basic skills and devices of poetry, and of making a habit of scanning poems.

But there is something about poetry that took me almost 20 years to learn, which I think I might have learned quicker if not for Jerome's heavy-handedness regarding the importance of meter and of clear and specific meaning. And I think Jerome's teaching style may have actually become an obstacle to my learning that lesson more quickly.

Early in the book, Jerome mentions taking a class in poetry taught by the poet C.V. Cunningham. In the class, Cunnningham encourages the students to explain just exactly what poetry is. He lets them go on for about 45 minutes, according to Jerome. Finally Cunningham says words to the effect of, "Well, in my opinion, poetry is words that are written in regular meter. If it is anything other than that, I don't know what it is." Jerome explains that Cunningham's words made him angry, at the time, because he (Jerome) felt that poetry was much more than that. Then he goes on to say that he could, reluctantly, see that Cunningham had a point. And from that point on, in his appreciation of poetry, as well as in his book (The Poet's Handbook) Jerome, in my opinion, puts too much emphasis on meter and not enough emphasis on the more creative and less easily categorized creative aspects of writing poetry.

I detest teachers like Cunningham. He was obviously lying. Poetry is much more to him than merely words written in a regular meter. He was affecting a *pose* of *all-knowing*, *wise teacher*, and as such was being dishonest with his students. He was adopting a teaching *strategy* rather than being direct and straight forawrd. Apparently Cunnningham thought that meter was so important that he needed to take a dictatorial approach with his students so that they would not be sidetracked by the other important elements and devices of poetry. And it is my opinion that Jerome, himself, was harmed by this blatant dishonesty. Ezra Pound proved that regular meter, although an imporant device of poetry, is not absolutely essential. His concepts of "cadence" and the "musical phrase" were a breath of fresh air and liberating for all poets.

There is an excellent book on poetry called Clement Wood's Unabridged Rhyming Dictionary. It is indispencible for those who want to rhyme, but it is more than just a rhyming dictionary. It is a very concise, readable, and extremely helpful book on virtually every aspect of the craft of writing poetry. But there are certain aspects of the craft for which Wood, like many poetry teachers, is no help at all. Here is an excerpt of his thoughts on free verse:

"Free verse has no rhytmic convention whatever, beyond the requirement that its rhythm must tend toward regularity or uniformity. It must not have the measured thudding drumbeat of accent verse. It must not exhibit the precise alternation of accent and unaccent shown in metric verse. And, of course, its rhythm must not exhibit the tendency toward variety shown by prose.

It is convenient to bound it by these three negatives. It must never be:

1. Metric Verse. Many of Walt Whitman's lyric passages in Leaves of Grass are definitely metric, as well as the lyric Joy, Shipmate, Joy! . . . . If your product, when scanned, fits into any of the metric patterns, it is not free verse.

2. Accent verse. Again, some of Whitman is definitely accent verse, as this 6-accent pattern. It is divided here into feet with one major accent each, or its equivalent: . . . .

3. Prose. Don't write prose, no matter how chopped up into brief lines, and think that it is free verse. The chopping-up process may make it more emotionally effective; but it cannot alter its innate prose quality.

If the product falls outside of these three clasifications, it is free verse. If it falls within any of the three classifications, it is conceivably well worth writing; but it is not free verse."

Clement Wood has made many good points here, but he has still managed to remain rather vague about what exactly can and cannot be called free verse. Suppose you have written a "poem" in which some lines are more more like accent verse, some are more like metrical verse, and some are more like prose. What do you call it? Not free verse, certainly. Not according to Clement Wood. And what if it is excellent writing in spite of the fact that it doesn't adhere to a specific metrical, or less than metrical, form? Like Cunningham and Jerome, Wood is giving the misleading impression, in my opinion, that the greatest distinguishing feature of poetry and verse, as well as free verse, is the feature of metrical rhythm or the lack thereof. I have a different view on judging whether a piece of writing is more like prose or poetry:

density of poetic devices, inventiveness, originality, creativity, and overall *feel* of the poem

It is entirely possible to write free verse that reads and sound like the best poetry (to the ear), yet defies the ways of categorizing used by Cunningham, Jerome, and Wood. If a bit of writing makes effective use of imagery, simile and metaphor, if it evokes the senses, and makes use of sound echoes such as aliteration, consonation, and assonation, if it uses vocabulary in interesting and inovative ways, and if it gives the reader an experience of the ellusive and mystical beauty of language itself, then it will read as poetic regardless of any categorization based on meter or lack thereof

Now, I realize I have just been more vague---in a sense---than Cunnningham, Jerome, and Wood, because I have given no clear cut way of distinguishinging free verse from prose. But I believe that is as it should be. The determination is not always so cut and dried. And I think it is misleading to imply otherwise. If a piece of prose (using the definitions of the above poets) still manages to read and sound like poetry, then it is likely because the poet has made effective use of all of the *other* poetic devices that have nothing to do with syllable count, accent, and meter. I can think of no better example of this than the poems of Carl Sandburg. He was a master of every kind of poetic device you can think of, but his verse was very seldom metrical, and often closer to prose, at least when viewed through the lense that Cunningham, Jerome, and Wood would have us use. That brings me to the subject of meaning.

Judson Jerome has a "thing" against poems with no clear meaning, even though he also claims to love some of them. I can see his point, somewhat. There is a lot of inferior "free verse" floating around out there that is self-absorbed, undisciplined, and meaningless (just as Jerome says), but some of it is also quite good, in my opinion, even though much of it tends to defy literal meaning. I am still grateful to Jerome for making me more attuned to this aspect of poetry, and this aspect of bad poetry, but after having read a lot of the kind of poetry that Jerome abhors, due to its obvious lack of meaning, I have leanred something that Jerome, apparently, could have never taught me: that by learning to continually surf between the two realms of meaning and non-meaning one can finally start hearing and experiencing words like a true poet. And it is obvious, from studying the poems and writings of such poets as T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Robert Creeley, John Ciardi, Mina Loy, Charles Olson, Edith Sitwell, and others, that it is by systematically defying literal meaning that many poets acquire the most difficult aspect of the craft of poetry: vocabulary. But vocabulary isn't enough. How you *use* vocabulary is equally important.

There is an excellent book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The purpose of the book is to teach people how to learn to "tune in" to the creative side of the brain as opposed to the linguistic side of the brain, so that they can learn to draw better. The liguisitc side of the brain is well-known to be lacking in creative ability. So what is the *writer* supposed to do? Writers must be creative and linguistic at the same time! And that, I think, is one of the most difficult barriers any aspiring poet will ever have to transcend. How do you do it? The only way, I can see, is to try to short-circuit literal meaning, or, attempt to write a poem that is poetic but meaningless, as a kind of exercsise. In the process you will learn something. It's not as easy as you think. In fact, it is virtually impossible. But the exercise can be very enlightening.

So, should meaningless, but poetic, poems be considered finished pieces or simply "sketches". I don't think it matters. If they are artfully done, then why not consider them finished? These kinds of poems may not appeal to every reader, but they have begun to fascinate me, because by struggling with the same problem (being poetic while defying meaning), I have finally opened up a side of myself that I thought I would never find. I am finally writing poems that *sound* like poetry.

I don't want to be too hard on Jerome, because I owe him so much. But I believe that it was... Read more ›