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Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, this twenty-fifth anniversary edition of
All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study of versification by one of our best contemporary practitioners of traditional poetic forms.
List of contents
Preface to the Second Edition xiiiAcknowledgments xviiIntroduction Part One: Iambic Verse1Metrical Norm and Rhythmical Modulation 2Scansion and Metrical Variation. Principles of Scansion . The Principal Iambic Meters . The Three Common Metrical Variations in Iambic Verse: The Trochaic Substitutionin the First Foot, the Mid-line Trochaic Substitution, and the Feminine Ending . Less Common Trochaic Substitutions and Trochees That Maybe Are Not Trochees . Loose Iambic—Iambic Verse with Anapestic Substitutions . Other Variants: Divided Lines, Clipped Lines, Broken-Backed Lines,and Feminine Caesuras 3Additional Sources of Rhythmical Modulation, Including Enjambment,Caesural Pause, and Word Length 4The Story of Elision, Including the Famous Rise, Troublesome Reign,and Tragical Fall of the Metrical Apostrophe . The Practice and Conventions of Elision . Elision and Changing Views about Syllable Count. How Real Is Elision? And What Are We, Finally, to Think of It?5Boundless Wealth from a Finite Store:Meter and Grammar Part Two: Other Matters, Other Meters6Rhyme . The Background and History of Rhyme. The Two Common Types of Rhyme in English—Full and Partial—and Some of Their Varieties
. The Use of RhymeSevenStanzas8Trochaic and Trisyllabic Meters9Alternative Modes of Versification in English. Accentual Verse. Syllabic Verse. Free Verse. Imitation-Classical VerseNotesGlossary Bibliography Permissions and Copyrights Index
About the author
Timothy Steele's books include
Toward the Winter Solstice, a collection of poems published by Ohio University Press. Among Steele's honors are a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing from Stanford University; a Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a professor emeritus at California State University, Los Angeles, where he taught literature and writing for twenty-five years.
