(Dresden Mills, ME) For more than four decades Lewis Putnam Turco’s The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics — the well-known companion to The Book of Literary Terms and The Book of Dialogue — has been standard in the libraries of writers, teachers, scholars, and others who care about the craft of poetry. Now Turco has expanded and updated “the poet’s bible” once again, this time incorporating a collection of “Odd and Invented Forms,” which adds many interesting ancient and modern prosodies and forms with new examples written by contemporary poets old and young. Turco continues to offer his copyrighted system of diagrams of the verse forms, presents his original formulation of “The Rules of Scansion,” discusses the “Levels of Poetry” — the typographical, the sonic, the sensory, and the ideational — and proffers the ever-useful “Form-Finder Index.”
The late poet and critic James Dickey wrote that this book “Belongs in the hands of every poet, student, and teacher, for the greater good of the art.” Choice magazine wrote that it is “An invaluable resource for readers interested in the craft of poetry. Recommended for all academic and public libraries.”
The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry $27.95 Paper, 978-1-61168-035-5.
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