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Poetry in a Time of Corona
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Shop nowPoetry
A Very Short Introduction
Narrator
Roger Clark
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Length
5 hours 3 minutes
Language
English
Poetry, arguably, has a greater range of conceptual meaning than perhaps any other term in English. At the most basic level everyone can recognize it—it is a kind of literature that uses special linguistic devices of organization and expression for aesthetic effect. However, far grander claims have been made for poetry than this—such as Shelley's that the poets "are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," and that poetry is "a higher truth."
In this Very Short Introduction Bernard O'Donoghue provides a fascinating look at the many different forms of writing which have been called "poetry"—from the Greeks to the present day. As well as questioning what poetry is, he asks what poetry is for, and considers contemporary debates on its value. Is there a universality to poetry? And does it have a duty of public utility and responsibility?
Bernard O'Donoghue is an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, where he taught medieval English and modern Irish poetry. Also a poet and a literary critic, his poetry collection Gunpowder was awarded the 1995 Whitbread Poetry Award. He has authored and edited several titles, including The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney and Reading Chaucer's Poems: A Guided Selection. In 2006, his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was published by Penguin.
Roger Clark is a professional actor and voice-over artist who lives in New York City with his beautiful family. American born, Roger moved to Ireland as a youth and graduated from the University of Glamorgan in Wales. He has performed in over forty-five countries. His first venture in audio narration was as a child, helping his father record local newspapers for the blind and visually impaired.