<div>The Poet Laureate's clear and entertaining account of how poetry works.<br><br>"Poetry is a vocal, which is to say a bodily, art," Robert Pinsky declares in <i>The Sounds of Poetry</i>. "The medium of poetry is the human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into signifying sounds in the larynx and the mouth. In this sense, poetry is as physical or bodily an art as dancing."<br><br>As Poet Laureate, Pinsky is one of America's best spokesmen for poetry. In this fascinating book, he explains how poets use the "technology" of poetry--its sounds--to create works of art that are "performed" in us when we read them aloud. <br><br>He devotes brief, informative chapters to accent and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, blank and free verse. He cites examples from the work of fifty different poets--from Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert to W. C. Williams, Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, C. K. Williams, Louise Glück, and Frank Bidart.<br><br>This ideal introductory volume belongs in the library of every poet and student of poetry.<br></div>