The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody, Paperback

``The Poem's Heartbeat may well be the finest general book available on prosody.``--Library Journal (starred review)

``A provocative, definitive manual.``--Publishers Weekly

Finally back in print, this slender, user-friendly guide to rhyme, rhythm, meter, and form sparks ``intuitive and technical lightning-flashes`` for poets and readers curious to know a poem's inner workings. Clear, good-humored, and deeply readable, Alfred Corn's book is the modern classic on prosody--the art and science of poetic meter.

Each of the book's ten chapters is a progressive, step-by-step presentation rich with examples to illustrate concepts such as line, stress, scansion marks, slant rhyme, and iambic pentameter. ``By the book's end,`` noted a rave review in The Boston Review, ``Corn, magi-teacher and impeccable guide, has taught the novice to become artist and magician.`` The Poem's Heartbeat also includes a selected bibliography and encourages readers and students to carry their investigations further.

The word ``line`` comes from the Latin linea, itself derived from the word for a thread of linen. We can look at the lines of poetry as slender compositional units forming a weave like that of a textile. Indeed, the word ``text`` has the same origin as the word ``textile.`` It isn't difficult to compare the compositional process to weaving, where thread moves from left to right, reaches the margin of the text, then shuttles back to begin the next unit . . .