The Poets Craft

The Poet’s Craft (1957) by A. F. Scott
Publisher: Cambridge University Press | ISBN: none (verse was simpler then) | Condition: Good (slightly foxed, but so is poetry)
Versified and vended by Crappy Old Books

What is poetry? Why does one line sing while another clunks like a tin kettle? And why do poets insist on wearing scarves indoors? These are the eternal mysteries A. F. Scott set out to unravel in The Poet’s Craft (1957), a volume that promised to guide aspiring bards through the maze of metre, metaphor, and mild despair.

This copy is rated Good. Which is to say: it has survived decades of earnest undergraduates pretending to understand iambic pentameter while doodling in the margins. The spine holds firm (firmer than many a poet’s nerves), and the pages are nicely mellowed, lending the whole enterprise a kind of sepia gravitas. Think of it as a workshop manual for the soul, but with fewer diagrams of carburettors.

Inside, Scott dutifully addresses rhythm, rhyme, imagery, symbolism, and that elusive thing called inspiration — the bit poets usually attribute to walks in the countryside or “listening to the wind.” He is earnest, instructive, and ever so slightly professorial, the sort of chap who would mark down Wordsworth for sloppy scansion while quietly admiring his daffodils.

Why you might want this book:

• Because you once wrote a haiku and thought, “I could be the next Pound” (Ezra, not Sterling).

• Because you like the idea of poetry as a craft, like joinery, but with more sighing.

• Because owning a Cambridge University Press manual on verse gives you instant critic cred.

• Because it’s fun to read the rules of poetry and then immediately ignore them.

So here it is: The Poet’s Craft — a well-worn guide to verse-making, still Good after nearly seventy years. Sold, with suitably ironic flourish, by Crappy Old Books, where even the muses occasionally trip over the furniture.

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