How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse

This is a really good book - if you are in the right mood for it. It is full of interesting facts and information, however I found it really hard to get my mind into the right gear to absorb the information as it is also very academic. If you like that kind of writing then this will be right up your street and probably tick a few boxes!

This is now the third book that I have read by Foster. Each time has been the same - un unstoppable rush to the next chapter, followed by a dismay that all things must end. I have, it seems, gone through life blithely oblivious to everything that has been around me. I have read thousands of books since those days when my neighbour brought some books back from the newly opened library and gave them to me to read and, in so doing, changed my life. A neighbour whose value I was also blithely oblivious to. Since reading Foster, I have been less blithe, less oblivious (and, to put this into perspective, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold...”) and the experience is...well...discombobulating. Offsetting the awe, the energy, the wonderment and bewilderment is an -almost- overwhelming sense of regret that I Didn’t Pay Attention To Any Of This Before. The narrative that my mind has constructed over recent months or years is that I thought I was living my life, but as the years go by, I realise that I have only ever lived the smallest part of it. Foster’s books have fed that perception by essentially saying, “Look again. See what you have missed. Now look again.” As for the tone and the manner in which he writes, I am sure that he will have his detractors. Personally, I find it comforting, supportive, collegial. He establishes a relationship with his readers - he’s patient, self-deprecating, insightful and never imposing. What you are left with is a clear understanding of just how deep his passion for the written word is and how consummate he is in his role as an educator. If you’re like me and have almost-lived your life, and you need a gentle doctor to lift the gauzes from your bruised eyes while they show you the world as it is to most likely everyone else, do like I did - buy all of Thomas C. Foster’s books and try to stop yourself from scarfing them down. Where possible, I limited myself to no more than a couple of chapters a day. And that has made all the difference.

This was a really interesting book illuminating what is and isn’t poetry. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about all the poets and how they work their craft. Like the author I can’t quite put my finger on it but I am hooked.

A fantastic easy-to-read guide to get more out of poetry. Written in a very un-academic style (despite the title). You will be able to read poetry and get more out it after reading this book. Excellent.

Plein d'humour et super intéressant ! Merci à cet auteur, son livre How to read literature like a professor m'avait beaucoup aidé pour mon bac (j'étais en section internationale) et aujourd'hui j'ai acheté toute la série, j'adore !!

FANTASTIC book for people wanting to brush up on their poetry comprehension skills. This book covers a wide range of topics, from general notes to more intermediate topics. I’d say this is for anyone who wants that good ol’ reading comprehension that everyone’s been talking about but feel to overwhelmed on where to start.

My dad was educated as an English teacher; I’m a mathematician. My dad used to taunt me with the Chaucer quoted in this book. In my dotage, I thought I’d learn about poetry. This is a great book but I’m afraid I’m a hopeless poet.

If you have read the other Foster books on literature and novels, then the set-up and arrangement of this newest title (March 2018) will not surprise you or disrupt the flow of your reading into the ideas presented. Foster provides interesting commentary in the introduction that would be well-suited for the upper level grades as an re-introduction of sorts to poetry and poetic forms. Foster writes, "I think that for most people, however, is the matter isn't so much not liking poetry as feeling somehow overmatched, as if it were a contest and the other side had better equipment and more skill" (3). For the rest of the introduction, Foster presents poetry in its bare-bones form and puts the would-be poetry reader at ease for presenting what both bring to the table by way of text and reader. In "Sounds of Sense" and "Sound Beyond Sense," Foster brings the reader gently back to poetry if the reader is patient with returning to some of that early learning in meter and rhyme and literary devices. For the upper grade reader, these elements of the book may serve well as have the other two books mentioned prior. Early on within this book, however, I note that that Foster is reserved in the examples used and they seem more accessible and familiar and I have to think that this is due in part to the potential fear and trepidation poetry brings along with it. The rest of the book presents like the literature and novels with quippy titles followed by a short chapter which includes a definition of the term, and exploration of the term, and samples from the larger poetry community. As more and more classroom teachers seek out nonfiction text for the classroom, this one would be very nice not only as a primer for poetry but as an informing vehicle for the sounds, techniques, and moves we seek in prose.

I’ve use d Foster’s other books over the years and highly recommend any/all of them for students and teachers who need a conversational approach to literary analysis understanding of the crafting of the patterns that writers use. I highly recommend these books; easy and fun to read.