The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics by Lewis Turco (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poeticsby Lewis Turco Joy Landeira Lewis Turco. The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Fifth Edition. U of New Mexico P, 2020. 431p. For fifty years, poets, teachers and students have relied upon The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poeticsto provide definitions, explanations, and examples of formal structures of verse written in English from classical times through the Middle Ages to the present. Comparatists who write and study poetry in other languages will also enjoy the commonalities and shared origins from Italian, French, Spanish, Welsh, and Irish works. True to its subtitle, the handbook’s handy “form finder index” lists over three hundred traditional forms, based on meter, rhyme scheme, and stanza or poem lines (91). More than a glossary or reference book, this up-to-the minute fifth edition goes well beyond enumerating and defining poetic forms. Its detailed and often humorous clarifications and examples from centuries of poets, as well as a good dose from the author himself, inspire readers to investigate and immerse themselves in poetry. Poetry, Turco tells us, is “the artof language.” He identifies the levelsof language usage: typography (how words are distributed on the page); sound (rhyme, meter, phrasing); tropes (figures of speech that appeal to all sensory modes); and theme. To bring them to life, the [End Page 136]author delights in engaging his own art of language and narrating with clever double entendre and internal rhyme. For instance, to interpret Mawr’s twelfth-century Welsh “To a Girl” who has spurned a lover, Turco vividly draws a picture: “the suitor is ‘cut dead’—he is no morethan a shadow lying flat on the floor… Mawrdoes no morewith this image” (53—italics mine). Mawr may not do more, but through his spry and sly intervention, Turco gives us Mawr and more. Teachers and students will appreciate not only basic information about poetic components, but also the careful and entertaining evaluations of how and why they work. More than three hundred pages are dedicated to “traditional verse forms,” divided by genre into dramatic (tragedy, comedy, monologue, dialogue, soliloquy), lyric, and narrative poetry (ballad, romance), with alphabetized definitions and illustrations. Lyric receives the lion’s share of attention, detailing hundreds of variants, with added discussions of voicing since lyric poems (songs) are in subjective voice, while narrative uses objective, and dramatic verse employs dramatic voice—of course, all can allow combinations. The real treasure gleams through the examples, from Anonymous Welsh medieval versifiers, to Emily Dickenson, to Walt Whitman, to the author himself. In an oft-played trick, Lewis Turco particularly indulges Wesli Court with long citations of frequently ribald original poems that perfectly demonstrate the concepts. Who is this Wesli Court? Hint, hint: see “acrostic” (128). If I may offer my own Spanish bilingual acrostic, I would tell you this is a Wise Truco! Poets and soon-to-be poets will find a wealth of inspiration in these structures and samples, for they challenge us to play. Try writing a cross-rhymed, alliterated Irish séadna, an enjambed sestina, an aubade (alba) for morning, or an elegy for mourning, or cut up words and rearrange them randomly into “Dada” poems. Turco dedicates The Book of Forms“to my students and formalist friends past, present, and future.” Don’t just use it as a reference, read it from beginning to end, and you too will be a formalist friend. [End Page 137] Joy Landeira University of Wyoming Copyright © 2021 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association