The brilliant Michael Rosen’s latest offering, What is Poetry?, introduces the many
faces of this underrated genre. He shares his knowledge on how to appreciate, read, understand, and write poetry properly.
Through the deconstruction of poems, Rosen reveals what poetry is, what it
does, and how it expresses views and feelings. He shows by example how poetry plays
with words in a symbolic way, and tells stories in an abbreviated manner.
How and why is personification used in poetry? What
role do the borrowed voices of monologue play? Why does the clever device of irony
allow the reader to interpret the poem in their own way?