>>7285995>>7285995The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics
Good look at poetics from new-formalists. Clear. Lots of forms to practice.
Poems, Poets, Poetry by Helen Vendler
Excellent critical material, focus on close reading technique, and a large selection of poets, with a strong focus on formally robust poets.
The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky
A distinguished poet, who writes very lovely but minor poems, discusses sound from a non-metrical standpoint. Examines vowels and things like that. I find he'd absorbed all the avant gaurde stuff and digested the poisons out of it.
The Oxford Book of English Verse, the original one, edited by A. T. Quiller-Couch. It ends with Yeats, the last great metrical poet. The last major anthology that has not assumed modernist poetic values.
A History of English Prosody by George Saintsbury is the landmark scholarly survey of the subject. A bit impressionistic. Can be found here
https://archive.org/details/historyofenglish03sainThe Oxford Book of Modern Poetry ed. by Philip Larkin is an interesting look at poetry coming from the modernist years but still in conversation with the tradition. Bit prosaic for my taste.
