Melodious Guile: Fictive Pattern in Poetic Language

Abstract

Demonstrating a poet's imaginative ear and a critic's range of concern, Hollander here writes about the melodious guile with which poetry speaks to us. Through analysis of formal and rhetorical patterns in examples chosen from the whole spectrum of English and American poetry, Hollander describes how poems frame self?reflexive parables in order to represent realms beyond themselves. John Hollander, himself a fine poet, is such a generalist; and Melodious Guile, to my mind the best of his critical books, takes its place-along with Donald Davie's Articulate Energy and Winifred Nowottny's The Language Poets Use-among the very few enjoyable and enriching studies of how poetry works.-Alastair Fowler, London Review of Books

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