Letters and Lyricism: R Is for Rhyme: A Poetry Alphabet by Judy Young

WAZY HEXAGONS,
DRIPPING WITH OOZY NECTAR,
SEALED IN VAULTED HIVES.
BE CAREFUL OF
STINGING SWORDS
GUARDING GOLDEN TREASURE.
---Japanese Tanka verse

Simple as A-B-C! Everything you ever needed to know about poetry in 26 letters! Well, not may be everything, but a whole lot more than most of us know about lyrical arts and letters is here, in a brand-new, fresh-as-spring paperback edition, which English teachers, librarians, and just plain poetry fanciers need on their ready reference shelf.

Okay, maybe you know what a cinquain is. But do you that G is for ghazal and that a ghazal is an ancient Persian verse form of five to twelve couplets? You already have a nodding acquaintance with haiku? Well, meet the haiku's big sister, the tanka, a form with five lines, with five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables per line, usually written on the subject of people or nature.

Poetic rarities and oddities such as these join the more familiar terms of the art in Judy Young's R is for Rhyme: A Poetry Alphabet (Alphabet Books) (Sleeping Bear, 2010). Acrostics to xanadu, they're all there--onomatopoeia, iambs, doublets, couplets, quatrains, metaphor, ballads, and sonnets, limericks and jingles, each term strikingly illustrated by Victor Jahase on its own double-page spread, with highly informative sidebars which describe the term, its history, and usage, and for each term, a poem in that form worthy of reading for its own sake. It's a poetry course in a nutshell library which can be read as a diverse and beautifully illustrated anthology, a poem-a-day source for Poetry Month, or as a quick but surprisingly detailed reference source.

I is for Inexpensive, H is for Handy, and B is for Beautiful!