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Gratitude Ode
03/05/08
Gratitude Ode
As a poet, I owe a great deal to one particular book...This review also won me first prize in the writelink reviewing the situation contest in June 2007.
The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry, hardback, 220pp, Hutchinson, £10.99.
Stephen Fry is probably best known as an actor. But he is also a closet poet, an incredibly skilled one, as this guide to writing and appreciating poetry shows.
Once upon a time, I would have dismissed most modern poetry adopting a formal structure as dated and old-fashioned. But this book changed all that. It opened my eyes to both the continuing possibilities of forms I already knew and the beauties of new structures I'd never heard of. And, although the book deals with many potentially overwhelming technical terms, it does so with a light comical touch and Fry's own examples, such as:
Let's hear it for the SAPPHIC ODE
An oyster bed of gleaming pearls
A finely wrought poetic mode
Not just for girls.
This is an enjoyable and useful book for any poetry reader. But for a writer, it is more than that. Read properly (yes, that does mean doing the exercises), it is the best value for money poetry writing course I've ever come across. And that's saying something!
Reviewed by Sarah James, website at http://www.milltech-systems.co.uk and blogging at http://www.writelink.co.uk/blogs/sarah_james .
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