The First Review of The Book of Forms, Fourth Edition

Martha Eshleman Smith e-mailed me today, December 29, 2011, to tell me that she had received her copy of the fourth edition of The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition from Amazon.com, and that she had posted a review on the Amazon web site.  It’s a five-star review, and I thank her profusely for it, but there are a few things I’d like to correct in it, or comment upon.

A few typos, first: “typological” level should read “typographical,” and Martha means “Berryman” when she says “Berrymore.” She says that “The format of the description of each form is unchanged from the prior editions,” but that isn’t always the case. For instance, the description of the ghazal is quite different, much expanded.

Also, Martha says that “gnome or gnomic don’t appear in the general index of this edition…,” and that’s true, but that’s because a “gnome” is defined in The Book of Literary Terms, the companion volume of The Book of Forms as “an apothegm or truism, q.v.,  sometimes in rhyming form. Some ‘Gnomic Verses’ may be found in … The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, … under the heading of englyn cyrch.” The “gnome” is not a verse form, so the term doesn’t appear in the new Fourth Edition; however, each “gnome” I’ve been publishing in my blog “Poetics and Ruminations” at www.lewisturco.net, consists of a group of six “tailgaters,” and the tailgater is a verse form which appears on page 360 of the Fourth Edition – it was a late addition.

Martha also says, “I would like to see the book have a perpetual supplement available on the web. And hope that Lewis Turco has the health and interest to produce a 5th edition that expands into the world forms entering English poetry, e.g. the Burmese climbing rhyme.” The idea behind The Book of Forms has always been to include those forms that have been used in English in the past. I’m afraid I haven’t run into any English examples of Burmese forms so far.

My publisher isn’t going to be interested in doing another edition for at least ten years. I have worked on The Book of Forms now for more than a half-century, since I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa in 1959. If I’m still around in ten years I doubt I’ll be interested in, or able to produce, a fifth edition.  However, as I did for the third edition, I will very likely post a few corrections to this one on my blog titled, “Odd and Invented Forms.” My editors and I labored intensively over our proofreading, but there are bound to be errors cropping up anyway; I’ll appreciate anyone sending me at [email protected] notice of those they find.

Thank you again, Martha.