Best Words, Best Order, 2nd Edition: Essays on Poetry | 
| Author: Stephen Dobyns
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 184489
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 1403961476
Dewey Decimal Number: 809.1
EAN: 9781403961471
ASIN: 1403961476
Publication Date: May 2, 2003
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Condition: Minor shelf wear.
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Amazon.com
As its title implies, Stephen Dobyns's rigorous collection of essays about poetry celebrates Coleridge's dictum that poetry is the best words in the best order. Dobyns's probing examinations of the elements of poetry--metaphor, pacing, tone--and his study of the evolution of free verse are not for Sunday-sunset versifiers. They are strenuous, meaty, and wholly satisfying fare, intended for serious students of poetry. Dobyns, the author of eight volumes of poetry (and 17 novels), believes, like Baudelaire, that "each poem ... has an optimum number of words [and] an optimum number of pieces of information ... and to go over or under even by one word weakens the whole." Poetry, he says, belongs to the reader, not the writer, and as readers, "at the close of the poem, we must not only feel that our expectations have been met but that our lives have been increased, if only to a small degree." And, if that's not challenge enough for the writer, add to it "that the conclusion of a given piece must appear both inevitable and surprising." The final third of the book comprises chapters on four writers, each of whom represents to Dobyns an ideal in poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke, who Dobyns says worked harder than any other poet to develop and change his work; Osip Mandelstam, an exemplar of moral centeredness; Anton Chekhov, for his sense of personal freedom; and Yannis Ritsos, for his "sense of the mystery that surrounds us."
Product Description
In this new edition of Best Words, Best Order, Stephen Dobyns further explains the mystery of the poet's work. Through essays on memory and metaphor, pacing, and the intricacies of voice and tone, and thoughtful appreciations of Chekhov, Ritsos, Mandelstam, and Rilke, Dobyns guides readers and writers through poetry's mysterious twilight communiques. For this new second edition, Dobyns has added two new essays, one dealing with the idea of "beauty" in poetry and another dealing with the almost mystical way poets connect seemingly disparate elements in a single work.
Book Description
In this new edition of Best Words, Best Order, Stephen Dobyns further explains the mystery of the poet's work. Through essays on memory and metaphor, pacing, and the intricacies of voice and tone, and thoughtful appreciations of Chekhov, Ritsos, Mandelstam, and Rilke, Dobyns guides readers and writers through poetry's mysterious twilight communiques. Dobyns, a poet and teacher, has the rare ability to speak to readers about his art. For this new second edition, Dobyns has added two new essays, one dealing with the idea of "beauty" in poetry and another dealing with the almost mystical way poets connect seemingly disparate things in a single poem. Anyone interested in the beauty and intricacy of writing will find great pleasure in this new edition of an enduring classic.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 essential essays March 21, 2003
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
These essays are amazing -- the most brilliant, thorough, painstaking essays on poetry I have ever read. Dobyns, who long ago got his MFA from Iowa University, the finest institution for graduate poetry, & now teaches in Boston, knows poetry through & through & wants his readers to as well. In this book he teaches about so many aspects of the highest poetry, how much the words have inside them, & does it in a way perfect for the reader (or for me anyway) to learn from so well. He considers poems throughout in order to illustrate concepts he's writing about, & the book closes with chapters on 3 20th century masters: Ritsos, Rilke, & Mandelstam, & the penultimate chapter about the intricate bestness of a poem of Dobyns's own. I wouldn't consider this a how-to book so much as a keep-this-in-mind-while-you-invent book. Essential essays.
thoughts on poetry May 8, 2002
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book will surely not serve to make its reader a master poet, but it is a very interesting read for anyone who cares about the high art of poetry. Anyone who's fairly new to poetry & wants to know more sbout it, about some ways to think of the words, really ought to read this book. Beyond that, it's enjoyable anyway to read someoned else's thoughts on poetry, poems, & the act of writing.
thoughts on poetry May 8, 2002
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book will surely not serve to make its reader a master poet, but it is a very interesting read for anyone who cares about the high art of poetry. Anyone who's fairly new to poetry & wants to know more sbout it, about some ways to think of the words, really ought to read this book. Beyond that, it's enjoyable anyway to read someoned else's thoughts on poetry, poems, & the act of writing.
 The best intentions February 4, 2002
2 out of 18 found this review helpful
Not sure it will make you a poet. But good intentions don't always lead to the subway. Heck, if he had read his own book, would he have written "Paradise Lost"? As Pierre Menard said (in Spanish), I am competing with Cervantes. The influence of Harold Bloom is nowhere less felt. Put your anxiety aside and spill your drink into the face of the loudmouth begging for it. Is that a prescription for poetry. Maybe not, but until a better one comes along, I'll stick with the best (thank you, Samuel Taylor Coleridge).
Not the neophyte, nor the Nobel January 18, 2001
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
I underlined perfusely and may read this right over again. If you need direction for your work this offers much to think about, from the practical to the philosophical. A good risk of you're buckling down to create. Can't say enough--if it's not your bag, you're either overeducated or under-interested in the subject matter.
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