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The Poet's Handbook

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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.

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.

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 because I listened to his advice regarding literal meaning that it took me so long to break free of one of the most common barriers to writing good poetry. I can still recommend the book, but only if you keep in mind what I am saying in this review. It is only his ideas reagarding the importance of meaning and meter that I object to. And then it is more of a matter of degree. It is his degree of emphasis I am objecting to, not his overall point. Having said that, if you are one of those poets who have gone too far the other way, and whose poems are incomprehensible, undisciplined, pretentious, and self-absorbed, you *need* to read Jerome. Perhaps he can straighten you out.

The aspects of poetry I am discussing here are on a continuum. Jerome, in my opinion, is too far in one direction when it comes to literal meaning and meter, so much so that his process may actually lead to being inhibited and blocked. But some of the contemporary poets that Jerome, rightly, condemns, are too far the other way on the continuum. If you will keep this in mind when reading Jerome's book, you will get a lot out of it. Except for the points I have made here, I think it is an excellent book. But once you have learned all the *basics* of craft, the best way to *grow* at your craft is to read as much poetry as you can and try to get inside the poet's head whenever you read a poem or see a device you like. Poems themselves are often a better school of the craft that *teachers* of poetry. It was by reading the poems of Dylan Thomas that I finally broke free from the constraints of direct, literal meaning.
I hope this review is helpful.

A fairly ample volume on technique. The poet wishes urgently to impress upon the reader of his Handbook that, yes, despite what you may have heard, there is technique involved in writing poetry; that most poetry is metrical, and rehearsed. It is not, he says with some asperity, a matter of spontaneous effusion.

The late Mr Jerome seems to have been a man with a salutary skepticism about the fashionable, to the point of being sharp and even sarcastic. Jerome is a formalist, as is every poet when you come right down to it (a poet is someone who makes, who is concerned with form, who shapes the language; and the most resolute of anti-formalists has an obsession with form, is perhaps more vexed by the problem of form than your average metrician). Jerome is blunt in this book. He shows us an excerpt from the work of Paul Blackburn, and gives us his verdict that it is forgotten as soon as it is read. He asks whether a poem by Denise Levertov -- not one who fought shy of the unconventional line-break -- wouldn't have been better off as a single-paragraph prose-poem. He rearranges Amy Lowell, and concedes that his rearrangement can't really help matters.

Oh, yes -- what, pray, do you imagine Judson Jerome's attitude toward E. E. Cummings was? He seems to have been quite "pro." Jerome insists, rightly, that in his most radical rearrangements of type, Cummings was not casual and not "spontaneous." He governed his language quite well ... and, Jerome reminds us, Cummings wrote many sonnets -- and verse as intricately metrical as anything by Sidney or Herrick.

The Poet's Handbook is no mere reactionary protest or polemic against the Beats (or against what Donald Hall has called the McPoem). It's a positive and salutary reminder that poetry is a craft, that it is conscious, that it is art and artifice. That although we are all poets in a certain sense (whether we make metaphor as adults or babble sounds for our own pleasure as children), there are certain things that can be learned, and are worth learning.

Addendum : Mr Jerome identifies the meter of W. H. Auden's early poem "Petition" as accentual tetrameter. We disagree; it is consistent and correct iambic pentameter.

I wanted to be a poet during one particularly misguided point in my youth. Blame it on excellent but misguided teachers in college. So I pursued it at some point by trying to read everything of value on the topic. I read a number of books. One I always recommend is Stanley Burnshaw's the Seamless Web. But I read many.

The last I bought was Jerome's Handbook. It was blatantly obvious that there was nothing more to be said in the attempt to learn the fashioning of a poem. Beyond this what more is necessary? Perhaps only the reading of other poets to serve up enough diverse material from which to fashion a personal aesthetic.

It's a truly great book

Simply put, this book may be the best instructional book ever written about poetry. Unlike other books, it isn't dry and tedious, and it doesn't focus on unimportant things. Rather, it's written in a lively, lucid style that is fascinating to read (I've read each chapter about 5 times). It explains everything, including meter, rhyme, alliteration, symbolism, the fixed forms (such as the sonnet), free-verse techniques, publishing realities, and more. GET THIS BOOK WHILE THERE ARE STILL COPIES AVAILABLE! Judson's book "The Poet and the Poem" is similar but is much more personal and uses his own poems as examples.

"It is the form, the shaping of the language, which makes the poetry endure." That, to my way of thinking explains what poetry -- and poets -- are all about. "Poetry requires more showmanship than honesty." Those statements are in a chapter titled "From sighs and groans to art."

It's this kind of cutting to the chase (or, in business terms, bottomlining) that makes Jerome the guru of contemporary poets-in-training. He simply tells it like it is.

In "Well of English Undefiled" Jerome discusses the English language and what it means to the poet. "One thing a poet learns," he writes, "is that there is no such thing as a synonym. Each word has irrepressible individuality." Finding which word is right for your poem involves much more than knowing definitions. It also involves understanding the impressions words make.

This is a book for all poets. The material in this book will revive you, sharpen your intellect and your skills, help you merge mechanics with art to create enduring and memorable poetry.

If you buy only one manual about writing poetry, make it this one. You won't be sorry.

I liked the spirit in which this book was written. The author was truly trying to be helpful to his readers. He was trying to teach what Poetry is , and how they can begin to learn to write it. He also was instructive on the situation of the Poet in a society in which few poets achieve true recognition . and reasonable financial reward. In the last chapter Jerome writes about 'poetry worlds' including the elite two- hundred who he says attend each other conferences and readings but make no place for the great number of real poets. Jerome tries to give a primer of what he regards as the basics. He argues that almost all the great poetry in English has been written in iambic pentameter. This is not because the writers consciously did this, but because this 'form' is what is most natural to English poetry. He writes too about the difference between scanning by syllable and by stress, explains what an open line and closed line are, gives his own conception of when free verse can be effective. He also gives guidance about where and how a beginning poet should try to publish. He explains what to expect in terms of rejection. He encourages the writing of poetry as valuable act in itself, but discourages those who would write only for themselves.
I found this book helpful and interesting. And I believe even today over thirty years after it was written it can be of help and guidance to aspiring poets.

For many, poetry is a purely subjective art form, impossible to judge and critique. Unfortunately, most people write terrible poetry. For the rest of us, there's Judson Jerome's impeccable handbook. Taking the view that poetry is a mechanical skill much like pottery, Jerome gently but facilely teaches how to construct a poem that *works* -- that is credible, accessible, and accomplishes what its author had in mind. This is very much a nuts-and-bolts book. It does not take the view that poetry is mystical or spiritual, thankfully (I'm sure there are dozens of books that'll offer that). Instead, it teaches the language and technique skills one needs to make poetry that isn't embarassing or fruity.<

This is a great little book for the aspiring poet or lyricist. As a songwriter more naturally inclined to melodies, I've benefitted from Jerome's insights into how language can be put together to produce certain effects.

I especially like how he doesn't pull any punches with all the fake poets out there, who have as little idea of their supposed craft as a palm reader does biology. I chuckle everytime I read his description of the kind of "poet" who sends in a blank sheet of paper with the word "god" typed in the middle of it: "that's my poem".

Anyway, worth the money if you're serious about lyrics or poetry. Also, for the best rhyming dictionary, see Sue Young's, available here on Amazon as well.