The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (Paperback)

by Lewis Turco (Author) "The terms poetry and poesy are often used interchangeably, but the former means that body of literature which is identified as being poems, and the..." (more)
Key Phrases: hymnal octave, ballade supreme, headless iamb, The Book of Literary Terms, Lord Randal, The Genres of Drama (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Companion to the Book of Literary Terms, an indispensable handbook, revised and updated for today's users.

From the Publisher
5 x 7 1/2 trim. LC 99-39099

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Product Details

• Paperback: 349 pages
• Publisher: UPNE; 3 edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584650222
• ISBN-13: 978-1584650225
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #324,728 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Jam-packed with forms, flaws, June 16, 2003

By	J. Ott "John Ott" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book has the most poetic forms in one convenient place of any book in my university's library. It is especially good for Welsh, Irish and Japanese native forms. However, I have quibbles with the notational system and vanity of the author.

His example poems and "translations in the form" are simply not good. Too many of them are by himself or someone named Wesli Court and they are dull, dull, dull compared to, say, the sparkling examples in John Hollander's Rhyme's Reason. The form-finder index is a good idea, but since it doesn't include rhyme schemes or line-lengths it requires you to read entries on dozens of forms to find the one you are looking for. Rather than have the entries organized like an encylopedia, the information is in essay-like paragraphs, requiring extra reading and searching. Hardly "quick and easy-to-use." Finally, his scansion system is inconsistent and sometimes the accents are printed off-alignment, making it difficult to determine which syllables have what value. The meanings of different symbols change depending on whether the verse is quantitative, accentual-syllabic, pure syllabic or pure accentual; rhymed or partially-rhymed. He often expects you to intuit which is which.

All that said, this book does contain a wealth of information. If you are looking for a beginning introduction to poetry, I would recommend Rhyme's Reason or Timothy Steele's All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing. Pros will want this one on the shelf, and will be better able to take it with the necessary salt.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Improvement of the second edition, June 23, 2000

By	Michael (Utah) - See all my reviews

A great book for anybody studying poetry and prosody. In-depth explanations of forms (more forms then I have ever found in other books). Easy to read explanations on what makes a poem, a poem. The index of forms is a great addition for those of us who are always looking for new ways to express our ideas in a formal manner. The index contains forms of one-line, to over two hundred-line forms, enough to keep any poet busy for some time. A reference book that should be in any poet's collection.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A book I---unfortunately--turn to often, May 7, 2004

By	David Margis (Cumming, GA United States) - See all my reviews

Turco is clearly a man in lust of poetic forms and methods. How long he spent learning the art, compiling information on various meters, stanzas, rhyme schems, and the like, I can't say, but he's done a very thorough job. That he doesn't cover free verse is perfectly understandable as this is, indeed, a book of forms (but to dismiss it outright as poetry at all is part of Turco's trademark pretention). Unfortunately, for somebody writing a book subtitled "A Handbook of Poetics," Turco not only doesn't attempt to make this handbook easy to use, at times he seems to bend over backwards to cause as much frustration as possible.
Take, for instance, an example. Let's say you want to write a Spenserian stanza. Well, you go and check the index--there are four pages listed, but page 271 is in bold, so you turn there (be glad you weren't looking up shanty, which contains two listings, both in bold). Well, no such luck, instead we are told that the Spenserian stanza is discussed in the "section on Narrative Poetry." One can respect Turco's decision not to repeat information already stated, but to not even give a simple page number where an outline of the form can be found smacks of a pretentious "I already told you that" attitude. It won't take long to check the other three listings, but by then the annoyance has already set in.
The six-page specific form index, where poetic forms and stanzas are arranged according to the number of lines they contain would be quite helpful--if Turco provided page numbers here. Apparently because he put them in the misleading index there was no need to put them in a place where they would be easily accessible and more useful. An extra twenty minutes on Turco's part could have eased a lot of headaches.
This is a helpful book that would come in handy for any poet or prosody student. But after three editions and still being arranged in such a ridiculous matter, I can't hep but think that it's time a new Book of Forms written by somebody who is not Lewis Turco to be published.