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  • Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns by Michael Theune book cover
  • Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns by Michael Theune book cover
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Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns

by Michael Theune

Reading poems through their turns

$25.92 USD
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AlbakiReads Editorial

Reading poems through their turns

Structure & Surprise organizes its approach to poetry around how a poem develops, inviting analysis through structure rather than through form or genre. The book considers several patterns, including the mid-course turn, elegy, irony, concession, emblem, and retrospective-prospective structures. This framework connects poems that may differ in kind and historical period, while keeping attention on the choices that shape their movement. Fourteen contemporary poets also contribute examples and commentary on their own work, bringing the book’s structural vocabulary into conversation with individual poems. Edited by Michael Theune, the collection serves as a resource for exploring poetic construction in teaching, writing, and analysis.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Teachers seeking a structure-centered approach to discussing poetry
  • Poets interested in examining different ways poems develop
  • Students of poetry looking beyond forms and genres as analytical categories

Themes

Poetic structureLiterary analysisPoetry teachingPoetic turns and development

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns offers a road map for analyzing poetry through examination of poems' structure, rather than their forms or genres. Michael Theune's breakthrough concept encourages students, teachers, and writers to use structure as a tool to see the fundamental affinities between strikingly different kinds of poetry and radically different literary eras. The book includes examination of the mid-course turn and the elegy, as well as the ironic, concessional, emblem, and retrospective-prospective structures, among others. In addition, 14 contemporary poets provide an example of and commentary on their own work.
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