The Norton Introduction to Poetry

Citation

Hunter, J. P., Booth, A., & Mays, K. J. (2006). The Norton Introduction to Poetry (9th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

Chapter Summary

The ninth edition (xxvi + 706 pages plus a 41-page appendix section) is, in the words of its preface as quoted in library catalogues, both an anthology and a textbook: a complete course in reading and writing about poetry in one volume, with 483 poems. The preface says the book studies poems through their elements and also in authorial, historical, cultural and critical contexts. The contents fall into five large parts: an opening chapter on reading, responding and writing; "Understanding the Text", on the elements of poetry; "Exploring Contexts"; an anthology section, "Reading More Poetry"; and "Writing about Poetry". Each chapter mixes explanation with groups of poems, many of them contemporary, and several end with thematic clusters for practice. The details below follow the publisher's table of contents as reproduced by the eCampus bookstore.

Poetry: Reading, Responding, Writing

The opening chapter (pp. 1–26) works through three stages using short love poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Linda Pastan, Ezra Pound, Ben Jonson, Seamus Heaney, Rita Dove, Anne Sexton and others, and ends with "Practicing Reading: Some Poems on Love", a cluster ranging from Shakespeare and Marvell to Sharon Olds and Li-Young Lee.

Understanding the Text: Tone; Speaker

The first element is tone (pp. 27–67), introduced with poems such as Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" and Blake's "London" and followed by clusters of poems about families and about animals. "Speaker: Whose Voice Do We Hear?" (pp. 68–92) opens with Hardy's "The Ruined Maid" and examines the voices poems adopt.

Understanding the Text: Situation and Setting; Language

"Situation and Setting: What Happens? Where? When?" (pp. 93–128) divides into situations, times and places. "Language" (pp. 129–198) is the longest elements chapter, with sections on precision and ambiguity (including an extract from Paradise Lost), "Picturing: The Languages of Description", metaphor and simile, and symbol.

Understanding the Text: The Sounds of Poetry; Internal Structure; External Form; The Whole Text

"The Sounds of Poetry" (pp. 199–230) covers sound and sense, with Poe's "The Raven" among its examples, and "Words and Music". "Internal Structure" (pp. 231–254) studies how poems are organised, through poems such as Robinson's "Mr. Flood's Party" and Larkin's "Church Going". "External Form" (pp. 255–289) treats the sonnet, stanza forms and "The Way a Poem Looks". "The Whole Text" (pp. 290–302) brings the elements together in readings of complete poems, ending with Coleridge's "Kubla Khan".

Exploring Contexts: Reading Poetry in Context; The Author's Work as Context

The contexts part begins with "Reading Poetry in Context" (pp. 303–338), on times, places and events and on constructing identity and exploring gender. "The Author's Work as Context: John Keats and Adrienne Rich" (pp. 339–381) presents a group of poems and prose by each poet, with a chronology.

Exploring Contexts: Literary Tradition; Cultural and Historical Contexts; Critical Contexts

"Literary Tradition as Context" (pp. 382–422) covers echo and allusion, haiku, poets writing about other poets, and "Cultural Belief and Tradition". "Cultural and Historical Contexts: The Harlem Renaissance" (pp. 423–465) combines poems with prose documents such as extracts from The New Negro, Langston Hughes's The Big Sea and Zora Neale Hurston's "How It Feels to Be Colored Me". "Critical Contexts: A Poetry Casebook" (pp. 466–496) gathers critical essays on Sylvia Plath's "Daddy".

Exploring Contexts: The Process of Creation; Evaluating Poetry

"The Process of Creation" (pp. 497–507) sets drafts beside final versions, for example Richard Wilbur's early stanzas of "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" and Keats's original and revised "Bright Star". "Evaluating Poetry" (pp. 508–523) asks students to judge poems, beginning with Shakespeare and Donne.

Reading More Poetry

An anthology section (pp. 524–600) of further poems, including complete longer works such as Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", Milton's "Lycidas", Stevens's "Sunday Morning", Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed", Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" and Yeats's "Byzantium", is followed by biographical sketches of poets (pp. 601–622).

Writing about Poetry

The final part (pp. 623–682) moves from paraphrase, summary and description to the elements of the essay, the writing process, the research essay, and quotation, citation and documentation, ending with a sample research paper on Emily Dickinson. A glossary and indexes of authors, titles and first lines follow.

Key Concepts

Elements of poetry

• Tone: the attitude a poem conveys towards its subject.
• Speaker: the voice that speaks a poem, which need not be the poet's own.
• Situation and setting: what happens in a poem, where and when.
• Figurative language: metaphor, simile and symbol, along with precision and ambiguity of word choice.
• Sound, structure and form: sound and sense, internal organisation, and external forms such as the sonnet and stanza patterns.

Contexts and writing

• Authorial context: reading a poem within the body of its author's work, here Keats and Adrienne Rich.
• Literary tradition: echo, allusion and imitation between poets.
• Cultural and historical context: the Harlem Renaissance as a case study.
• Critical context: a casebook of interpretations of one poem.
• The research essay: planning, writing and documenting an argument about poetry.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A complete course in one book. The sequence from elements to contexts to writing gives an instructor or a self-taught reader a full semester's structure, as the preface claims.
• Contexts as well as close reading. Beyond the elements, the book offers several ways of placing poems: an author's career (Keats and Rich), tradition, a historical movement (the Harlem Renaissance with prose documents), critical debate (the Plath casebook) and revision (drafts by Wilbur and Keats).
• Contemporary and diverse selection. Many of the 483 poems are by twentieth-century and contemporary poets, including Latino, Native American and Caribbean voices in the clusters on families, alongside canonical poems.
• Practical writing instruction. Sixty pages on writing take students from paraphrase to a documented research essay, with a sample paper.

Limitations

• An older edition. The ninth edition dates from 2006, so its contemporary poems and its guidance on research and documentation reflect that period; students assigned it should check whether a course expects a later edition.
• Selective anthology. With 483 poems, long works are rarely included and individual poets are represented by a handful of poems, apart from Keats and Rich.
• Prosody inside broader chapters. Metre and versification are handled within the chapters on sound and form rather than in a separate extended treatment, so students who want detailed scansion practice may need additional material.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the poetry course this is the textbook that teaches how to read. The Norton Anthology of Poetry is the much larger collection (1,871 poems in its sixth edition) arranged chronologically by poet with little explanatory apparatus; begin with this book's chapters on the elements and use the anthology to read further in any period or poet. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics gives fuller entries on the terms introduced here, and Jonathan Culler's Theory of the Lyric is a book-length argument about lyric that builds on the kind of reading taught in the first part of this book. Kaveh Akbar's Calling a Wolf a Wolf, a contemporary collection, is a good test for the skills of the "Understanding the Text" chapters.

How to Use This Book

The book is for first- and second-year students with no previous study of poetry, and for instructors of introductory courses. Read the opening chapter first, then work through "Understanding the Text" in order, since each element builds on the last; read the explanatory pages closely and treat the poem clusters as practice. Choose among the context chapters according to the course: the Keats and Rich chapter and the Harlem Renaissance chapter work well as units of their own, and the Plath casebook is a model for using criticism in an essay.

Use "Reading More Poetry" for extra reading and exam practice, and turn to "Writing about Poetry" as soon as the first essay is set; the sample research paper shows how quotation and documentation work in practice. Keep the glossary at hand throughout.