Measure for Measure Edited by Annie Finch and Alexandra Oliver

This comprehensive and joyous celebration of metrical verse brings together some of the best rhythmic lines in literature.

After a century dominated by free verse, there is a new excitement about rediscovering poetry’s ancient roots in music and performance. Iambic pentameter is the most familiar metre for most readers, but it only scratches the surface of the extraordinary diversity of rhythmic patterns that poets have employed over the ages. That astonishing variety is fully explored in this unique anthology, packed with great poems that beg to be read aloud. Measure for Measure is organized by metre, with brief explanatory headnotes covering accentual metre, trochees, anapaests, dactyls, iambs, ballad metre, and more exotic species like amphibrachs, dipodics, hendecasyllabics, sapphics, and more.

The entrancing examples of each metre are drawn from a wide range of poetic traditions, from Ovid and Sappho to Shakespeare and Milton, encompassing the Romantics, the Victorians, ballads, folk songs, poets of the Harlem renaissance, and modern day hip-hop. Whether performed aloud or enjoyed in solitude, Measure for Measure is a treat for the ear, the heart and the mind.

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