With its compact but inclusive survey of more than four centuries of poetry, Blank Verse is filled with practical advice for poets of our own day who may wish to attempt the form or enhance their mastery of it. Enriched with numerous examples, Shaw’s discussions of verse technique are lively and accessible, inviting to all.
Robert B. Shaw is a professor of English at Mount Holyoke College. He writes frequently on modern and contemporary poetry. His own books of poems include Below the Surface and Solving for X (winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize).
“This conversational, engaging study offers a much-needed
reconsideration of blank verse and the poets who explore its
intricacies. Essential.”
*CHOICE*
“Robert B. Shaw’s Blank Verse: A Guide to Its History and Use is a
popular study in the best sense of the word. It is written entirely
without scholarly jargon. Its explanations are clear and direct,
its examples abundant and well chosen. Its author knows his subject
intimately well.”
*Eclectica*
“At the conclusion of Blank Verse, one feels admiring gratitude to
Robert B. Shaw, who has guided us with such imaginative care for a
particular verse medium and also for the larger enterprise of
poetry.”
*Modern Philology*
“Shaw‘s eminently readable volume is a fine guide to how blank
verse has been written, and especially for how it may be taken up
by aspirant poets. Its efforts to serve as comprehensive survey and
instructive commentary at once could hardly be more
successful.”
*Pleiades*
“I am enthusiastic about Blank Verse. It’s based on a wide,
sensitive reading of the tradition, and it deftly negotiates the
demands of technical precision and clear exposition.”
*coauthor of A History of the English Language (5th Edition)*
“Robert B. Shaw’s Blank Verse is a remarkable history-in-little of
the crucial question of poetry written in English that takes the
form of blank verse or unrhymed iambic pentameter. William
Shakespeare, John Milton, and William Wordsworth are necessarily
the greatest poets analyzed by Shaw, but he gives particular
emphasis to the twentieth century and to ongoing literary history.
The book’s achievement is considerable: it offers accurate
instruction in prosody and a vast store of curious and useful
information about particular poets and their poems.”
*—Harold Bloom, author of The Western Canon: The Books and School
of the Ages*
“Shaw’s research and instruction bring new music to this most
familiar rhythm, updating our understanding and enlivening the
conversation.”
*American Poet*
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