The Ode Less Travelled: A guide to writing poetry

Fry, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099509342 ISBN 13: 9780099509349

Publisher: Arrow, 2007

Stephen Fry believes that if you can speak and read English you can write poetry. But it is no fun if you don't know where to start or have been led to believe that Anything Goes.

Stephen, who has long written poems, and indeed has written long poems, for his own private pleasure, invites you to discover the incomparable delights of metre, rhyme and verse forms.
Whether you want to write a Petrarchan sonnet for your lover's birthday, an epithalamion for your sister's wedding or a villanelle excoriating the government's housing policy, The Ode Less Travelled will give you the tools and the confidence to do so.

Brimful of enjoyable exercises, witty insights and simple step-by-step advice, The Ode Less Travelled guides the reader towards mastery and confidence in the Mother of the Arts.

Review:

"Fry's extraordinary book is an idiots' guide to the writing of poetry, a primer, a tutorial with funny turns, an earnest textbook... You can't but marvel at Fry's easy familiarity with the rictameter and the rondeau redoublé and applaud the energy of his evangelistic zeal" (Independent on Sunday)

"With his usual wit and occasional obscenity, he takes us through an array of metrical forms and poetic structures, talking to us like a cajoling hearty teacher" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Intelligent and informative, a worthy enterprise well executed" (Observer)

"A smart, sane and entertaining return to basics" (Daily Telegraph)

"Funny and instructive" (Spectator)

From the Publisher:

Stephen Fry's On Poetry provides us with a witty and entertaining guide to the mysteries of writing poetry.