The Essential Poet's Glossary

madness of a Borgesian encyclopedia,

is selective and international.

variety of poetries, oral and written, lyric and epic.

drills down to what I deem the most crucial terms for understanding and appreciating poetry.

That book was as definitive, inclusive, and international as I could make it. This volume is shorter and more focused

This book is culled from the much larger book A Poet’s Glossary.

my quarrelsome friends, an extended family of makers. I’ve tried to figure out what they’ve been up to over the centuries.

craftsmen, and the seers (singers, chanters, listeners, readers, writers);

the long-lived purists and the doomed romantics, the holy eccentrics, the critics

those who would rebuild it