Book reviews from elefem

The People of Heaven

by John Sanford

An astonishingly fluid and variegated story of social conflict in a small town, published in 1943 by a talented leftist writer. Chosen in 1995 for republication as part of the Radical Novel Reconsidered project of the University of Illinois.

Poetic Rhythm

by Derek Attridge

A very erudite text book, apparently oriented toward advanced English majors and grad students. If you're into the spondee and the hemistich, this is your book. I'm not an English major, much less a poet, but I've learned more about poetic structure from this book than I even suspected was there to be learned. I found especially intriguing the frequent observations regarding the impact on tone and meaning, of various metric patterns and deviations therefrom.