Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense Review

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(More customer reviews)I have used this book extensively in my college level literature and composition class. It has proven an invaluable resource for those seeking information on topics ranging from analysis of poetry to dramatic interpretation to stylistic movement within a piece of writing.The text offers specific examples within its lessons and includes many unabridged sources including poems, short stories, and plays. I highly recommend this book to any who seek to expand their knowledge of literary structure, sound, and sense. It will prove valuable as you struggle to expand as a writer, reader, and thinker.

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For over twenty-five years, this three-genre anthology has been a leading title for introductory literature courses. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the principal forms of fiction, poetry, and drama. Each section includes a simple discussion of the elements of the form and carefully selected stories, poems, or plays for illustration. Each section also includes an anthology of additional selections for further reading. In the Seventh Edition, the tradition of clear, precise writing and practical organization initiated by Laurence Perrine years ago is continued by Thomas R. Arp, Professor Perrine's colleague at Southern Methodist University and co-author of the Perrine trilogy for many years. He has used the same criteria of literary excellence and teaching usefulness that he and Professor Perrine utilized during the years of their collaboration to select new stories, poems, and plays for the anthology and has updated certain sections to reflect reader preferences and recent literary interests.Features: * Continues to present the best of classic literature, along with new contemporary writers.* Organized around the elements of literature within each genre, the section sare arranged progressively to give students information to understand and use. * Includes a "Writing About Literature" appendix to help guide students through the process of thinking and writing about literature.New to this edition: * Nine new short stories and one new novella (about 25% of the total selections), including works by Toni Cade Bambara, Margaret Atwood, Ann Beattie, Dagoberto Gilb, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Ann Porter. * Numerous new poems (about 30% of the total selections), many by women and minority poets. * Completely rewritten chapter on Meter and Rhythm to include expanded coverage of non-metrical verse. * Several limericks by Laurence Perrine, a master of that verse form. * New one-act plays by six playwrights, including Vaclav Havel, Tom Stoppard, J.E. Franklin, Luis Valdez, and Christopher Durang, in addition to classics by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Sophocles, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and others.

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Perrine's Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry (Perrine's Sound & Sense: An Introduction to Poetry) Review

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(More customer reviews)I came across an early edition of Sound and Sense a few years ago. At first glance the slighty yellowed text appeared foreboding with chapters like denotation and connotation, imagery, figurative lanaguage, allusion, tone, rhythm and meter, sound and meaning, and so forth. I found it hard to imagine a less lifeless approach to poetry. However, the text did seem to contain a sizeable anthology as an appendix and poetry was abundant in every chapter. I reasoned that I could skip the poetic structure discussions and simply read the poetry.
But from the beginning I found Perrine's style and approach to be stimulating, rather than analytical. Throughout we are immersed in poetry, great poetry, familiar poetry, unfamiliar poetry. Perrine argues that poetry needs to be read and reread carefully for full understanding and appreciation. We need to learn to think about poetry with some seriousness, but not in a cold, calculating manner. We approach new poetry with our eyes and ears open, our senses alive.
Yes, as other reviewers point out, Sound and Sense is structured and does methodically explore poetic forms in some detail. But this is not a drawback. It is actually an aid to understanding. Perrine manages to achieve his instructional objective without diluting his central message: poetry is to be enjoyed. He never forgets that his subject is poetry, and not poetic form and structure.
I have since learned that Perrine's text is still in use today, nearly fifty years after publication of the first edition. (See recent 10th edition 0155073966, June 8, 2000.) How can that be? Few textbooks achieve ten printings, much less ten editions. Even the title change signifies respect; it is no longer simply Sound and Sense, it is "Perrine's Sound and Sense".
I highly recommend Perine's text to anyone willing to invest a little time and study to poetry. The return will be worthwhile. I give Sound and Sense five stars.

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There's no better way for you to learn about poetry and understand its elements than with PERRINE'S SOUND AND SENSE. Both a concise introduction to poetry and an anthology, this classic best-seller succinctly covers the basics of poetry with chapters on evaluating poetry, exemplary poetry selections that you'll enjoy reading, and exercises that help you understand each selection. Every poem included in this collection is not only a perfect illustration of the poetic concept at hand, but a remarkable work in its own right.

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The Top 500 Poems Review

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(More customer reviews)I like to buy this book as a present for people I like because I know I can hardly go wrong. (Forget the Godiva chocolates or the Heitz Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon: this will last!) Whether one is a wannabe rap master from Watts or a distinguished professor of English lit at the Sorbonne, there will be something here to please, I promise.
It should be emphasized that this is a collection of strictly English language poetry, which means, for example, that none of verses from Edward Fitzgerald's very English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam appears even though some of those verses are among the most popular and the most anthologized. It should also be noted that this is not a contemporary collection (copyright date, 1992) so there's no Gary Soto or Rita Dove or Louise Gluck or even Margaret Atwood. It should also be pointed out that if you're looking into Keats's, e.g., "Ode to a Nightingale," for the first time, perhaps this is not the best place to find it since none of the poems are explicated. Editor William Harmon does give a brief note as an introduction to each poet, and concludes each poem with a brief comment.
The collection is popular of course and spans English poetry from Chaucer to Sylvia Plath but there's nary a ditty to be found. Although T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is here (hurrah!), there's nothing from his Book of Practical Cats (alas) and no Kipling's "If"! This is really high class stuff, quite simply the best. All the giants are here, Shakespeare, Donne, Pope, Burns, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Ezra Pound, Andrew Marvell, Frost, Yeats, Dickinson, etc., etc. Some moderns are represented, Allen Ginsberg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, Philip Larkin, etc., although notably absent is Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Harmon's method of selection was to peruse anthologies and include those poems most often making an appearance. Of course it's obvious that some editorial decisions were made. I have little doubt that Kipling's "If" really is among the 500 most anthologized poems, although it doesn't appear here, and ditto for Robert Service and his very popular, "The Cremation of Sam McGee." But perhaps this is just as well since those poems really are easily found elsewhere. The admirable point that Harmon is making with this collection is that one can include in a popular book the great poems of the language even though some of them are "difficult." In this category there's Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts," T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" and others. Harmon also does not shy away from poems often left out of anthologies because of length. Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is here in toto and so is Eliot's "The Waste Land" and Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."
Of course not everything is here, and one can indeed find fault. There can be differences of opinion, and it is very true that a collection based on other collections will indeed leave out some great poems and poets. Amy Lowell does not appear, meaning that her "Patterns," one of the great poems in the language, is not here. John Crowe Ransom's "Blue Girls," one of my personal favorites is apparently not much anthologized; at least it doesn't appear here. And I was surprised at only two selections from e. e. cummings (and neither one was "plato told him"!).
But this is to nitpick. This is a great collection and more than that it is beautifully edited. The poems are presented chronologically, beginning with the anonymous "Cuckoo Song." There is an index of titles and first lines, which is the way it should be. (Some editors fail to include titles in such an index, but we think of both when trying to recall...) There is an index of poets, and finally the 500 poems are listed in order of popularity. William Blake's "The Tiger" is number one. (For some reason Harmon modernized Blake's spelling of "Tyger.") Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is the most anthologized poem by an American. Even Harmon's short introduction, which he titles "This is it!" is well worth reading. Therein one discovers that Shakespeare is the poet with the most poems included (29), followed by Donne (19), Blake (18) and Dickinson and Yeats (14).
Here (as a public service) I was going to explicate Donne's charming but tricky (and a wee bit sexist) "Go and Catch a Falling Star" (an apt choice because Harmon has "I" instead of the poet's intended "If," a typo at the beginning of line nine) but I'm running out of space, and besides poets hate to be explicated.

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