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books_first_ 's review for:
A Little History of Poetry
by John Carey
Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
A Little History of Poetry is exactly what I expected it to be: A little bit of everything.
It introduces the topic of poetry to an audience with either little or no knowledge or Poetry and this is exactly what we need. The language is simple enough for everyone to be able to follow and the examples from primary texts are wonderfully explained.
Despite being passionate about Poetry and even having studied it, I went into this book with the mindset of how would my friend who never read a single poem in their lives react to this? How would my mum, whose knowledge about literature doesn't go far beyond what I told her in one of my ramblings? How would a young person, who finds a poem they like for the first time and want to know more about the art-form in general?
This is an ideal book for such people. There are a lot of different topics covered, the book mainly keeps to the poets represented in the canon but I love that it focuses on women's poetry more than most other books do. I even found a thing or two in there that I previously didn't know and highly enjoyed reading about those. I would've loved to learn some more about poetry in countries that do not belong to the western realm, e. g. Japan with their Haiku culture, but again, there is only so much you can cover in a general book such as this one, so I definitely understand that there are some parts that had to be left out.
The reason for my rating it with three stars instead of a full five, is that I liked it overall, but I think there were some things missing (for me). For example, while reading the chapter on Petrarch, I was waiting for a mention about how he basically invented the form of the sonnet or that a sonnet is typically a love poem. In the chapter about Shakespeare, I would've loved to read about how Shakespeare's sonnets were sort of a sarcastic reply to Petarch's art and how he changed the sonnet form, thus establishing the two most famous sonnet forms that exist. But that might just be my opinion. Obviously, the author couldn't focus on everything, he did try to put 6000 years of art into ~300 pages after all.
The other thing I wasn't crazy about while reading is - keeping the novel poetry reader in mind - the blatantly obvious personal opinion of the author. As any art-form, people should be able to make their own minds up about the poems they read. I found myself disagreeing with the author on some points, which I was able to do, because I do already have some knowledge about poetry. To keep with my example of my mother: She would definitely read the chapter about Shakespeare and take from it that his poetry was inferior to other poet's (which is a personal opinion. However, not mine, I happen to like Shakespeare's sonnets) and that he should be criticised because we can't know whether he wrote from his own experience or with his ability to write from the POV of a fictional character (honestly, I do not care, as long as the words resonate with me - and i think they are quite emotionally engaging actually - there is no reason to criticise).
All in all, I think this is a great book in a language that is easily understandable for newbies- would definitely recommend! However, any reader should take the opinions stated in this book with a pinch of salt and instead rather make up their own minds about the poems and the writers.
A Little History of Poetry is exactly what I expected it to be: A little bit of everything.
It introduces the topic of poetry to an audience with either little or no knowledge or Poetry and this is exactly what we need. The language is simple enough for everyone to be able to follow and the examples from primary texts are wonderfully explained.
Despite being passionate about Poetry and even having studied it, I went into this book with the mindset of how would my friend who never read a single poem in their lives react to this? How would my mum, whose knowledge about literature doesn't go far beyond what I told her in one of my ramblings? How would a young person, who finds a poem they like for the first time and want to know more about the art-form in general?
This is an ideal book for such people. There are a lot of different topics covered, the book mainly keeps to the poets represented in the canon but I love that it focuses on women's poetry more than most other books do. I even found a thing or two in there that I previously didn't know and highly enjoyed reading about those. I would've loved to learn some more about poetry in countries that do not belong to the western realm, e. g. Japan with their Haiku culture, but again, there is only so much you can cover in a general book such as this one, so I definitely understand that there are some parts that had to be left out.
The reason for my rating it with three stars instead of a full five, is that I liked it overall, but I think there were some things missing (for me). For example, while reading the chapter on Petrarch, I was waiting for a mention about how he basically invented the form of the sonnet or that a sonnet is typically a love poem. In the chapter about Shakespeare, I would've loved to read about how Shakespeare's sonnets were sort of a sarcastic reply to Petarch's art and how he changed the sonnet form, thus establishing the two most famous sonnet forms that exist. But that might just be my opinion. Obviously, the author couldn't focus on everything, he did try to put 6000 years of art into ~300 pages after all.
The other thing I wasn't crazy about while reading is - keeping the novel poetry reader in mind - the blatantly obvious personal opinion of the author. As any art-form, people should be able to make their own minds up about the poems they read. I found myself disagreeing with the author on some points, which I was able to do, because I do already have some knowledge about poetry. To keep with my example of my mother: She would definitely read the chapter about Shakespeare and take from it that his poetry was inferior to other poet's (which is a personal opinion. However, not mine, I happen to like Shakespeare's sonnets) and that he should be criticised because we can't know whether he wrote from his own experience or with his ability to write from the POV of a fictional character (honestly, I do not care, as long as the words resonate with me - and i think they are quite emotionally engaging actually - there is no reason to criticise).
All in all, I think this is a great book in a language that is easily understandable for newbies- would definitely recommend! However, any reader should take the opinions stated in this book with a pinch of salt and instead rather make up their own minds about the poems and the writers.