How to Read (and Write About) Poetry invites students and others curious about poetry to join the critical conversation about a genre many find a little mystifying, even intimidating. In an accessible, engaging manner, this book introduces the productive questions, reading strategies, literary terms, and secondary research tips that will empower readers to participate in literary analysis. Holbrook explicates a number of meaty poems, initiating readers into critical discourse while highlighting key poetic terms. These useful terms are fully defined in a glossary at the back of the book. The explications are followed by selections of related works, so the book thus offers what amounts to a brief anthology, ideal for a poetry unit or introductory class on poetry and poetics. Readers can bring some of the new skills they’ve acquired to these selections, which range across periods and styles. A chapter on meter illuminates the rhythmic dimension of poetry and guides readers through methods of scansion.

Holbrook also offers guidance on essay writing, preparing students for literary discussion within and beyond the classroom. The conciseness of the book makes it portable and affordable, while its various instructive components make it a resource that will continue to serve its readers as their explorations of poetry continue.

Susan Holbrook's poetry books are the Trillium-nominated Joy Is So Exhausting (Coach House, 2009), Good Egg Bad Seed (Nomados, 2004) and Misled (Red Deer, 1999), which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award. She lives in Leamington, Ontario, and teaches North American literatures and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. She is the author of a poetry textbook, Reading (and Writing About) Poetry (Broadview Press, 2015) and co-editor, with Thomas Dilworth, of The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson: Composition as Conversation (Oxford, 2010).

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“Susan Holbrook’s How to Read (and Write About) Poetry is a terrific textbook for helping students become more confident and careful readers of poetry. Offering a terrific selection of primary texts, from Shakespeare to Harryette Mullen, William Blake to Gertrude Stein, this collection also offers a terrific selection of strategies for and examples of the practice of reading poetry. Holbrook’s engaging writing style and judicious groupings of poems offer something for every student and every instructor.” — Deborah Mix, Ball State University