The Craft of Poetry: Dialogues on Minimal Interpretation

Intelligent readers of poetry, F. R. Leavis once suggested, characteristically offer their responses to a poem in the form `this is so, isn't it?', appealing both for confirmation that their findings are `so', but also expecting and welcoming from their listeners `qualifications, reserves, corrections', in the form `yes, but...'. The Craft of Poetry offers a rare opportunity to see in action the processes of dialogic exchange by which two readers can come to a fuller imaginative `possession' of a number of very different poems. Where most academic critical primers tend to present their authors' cut-and-dried and sometimes over-ingenious `interpretations' of the works under discussion - often by-passing local difficulties and details to co-opt their findings within a pre-ordained and over-arching ideological or moral frameworks - Attridge and Staten show us what it is like for two open-minded readers to puzzle out the meaning and artistry of poems at the indispensable `first level' of engagement. The result is an inspiring and exemplary demonstration of the poetry-reading process `in slow motion'. David Hopkins, Professor of English, University of Bristol, UK

The Craft of Poetry is a valuable reminder that knowledge of poetry involves attentiveness to the created work of art and openness to interpretative dialogue. The authors, Derek Attridge and Henry Staten, stage a thought-provoking series of encounters with a range of lyric poems. Alert and clear, the book points to new, critically rewarding ways of showing what happens (or should happen) when we read poetry.'' Michael O'Neill, Durham University, UK