Subject Area: Writing-Poetry

Variety of Poetica Genres: Ars Poetica

Christopher, Joe R.
2012 0-7734-3056-3 124 pages
A collection of poems that displays a myriad of poetic genres complete with references. It provides ample opportunity for students to learn about all the different kinds of prose poems, even the lesser known tropes. The first section of Dr. Christopher's book is titled "Theory", which has a number of poems about poetic genres: "Prose Poetry", "What's a Sonnet for?," "A Genre is a Norm," "Comment on Naturalism," "The Novel Has Replaced the the Long Poem," and others. He also comments on style, on literary movements, on religous verse, on writing conferences, and criticism. The second section is titled "Practioners," and it contains poems commenting on the works of other poets (beginning in the classical period) or parodying their works or (in a few cases) translating their poems. In short Christopher's work is not focused on one aspect of poetry as John Holland's Rhyme's Reason was about verse forms, but it belongs in the same class of poetry about poems. The book aims to toy with the idea of what it is to write poetry, even while evoking styles used by famous poets from the past.