Description

Faber &Faber,paperback

Publication Date:February 8, 2022

Publisher Marketing:Illuminating and authoritative treatise on ‘how a poem works’, from the multi-award-winning poet, editor and professor of poetry now in paperback.

The Poemattempts to answer several questions: whatisa poem? In what way is its use of language distinct? What conditions allow it to arise, and what is its cultural purpose? And how, exactly, do poemswork? Part polemic, part technical treatise and part meditation,The Poemis an ambitious contemporary ars poetica. Paterson looks at the writing, transmission and reading of poetry with wit and scholarly flair, drawing together literary analysis, linguistics, metaphysics, psychology and cognitive science in a thorough exploration of how and why poems are composed.

The Poemtakes the form of three long essays. Lyric attends to the music and sound patterns of poetry, and the way in which they work to deepen poetic sense; Sign develops a new theory of metaphor, metonym and symbol, and looks at how ideas of meaning change under poetic conditions; Metre addresses poetrys relationship to time and to the rhythms of speech, then builds a theory of prosody from the ground up, proposing some radical correctives to existing metrical theory along the way.

Through his various professional guises as major prize-winning poet, as Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and as Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan few are better placed to grant this insiders perspective. For all those intrigued by the inner workings of the art form and its fundamental secrets,The Poemwill challenge, intrigue and surprise.