explication

"On bookstore [and library] shelves, one book looks as authoritative as the next. Online, posts and memes don't announce their relative veracity. It is up to readers to establish how accurate, how thorough, how fair material may be. After laying out general principles of reading nonfiction, [this book] offers advice for specific reading strategies in various genres from histories and biographies to science and technology to social media. Throughout, the emphasis will be on understanding writers' biases, interrogating claims, analyzing arguments, remaining wary of broad assertions and easy answers, and thinking critically about the written and spoken materials readers encounter"--Publisher's description.

"This book invites the reader to jump into a selection of poems about the natural world written by people from different places and times. It gives the reader the keys needed to unlock poems. It equips the reader to explore the meanings that a poem has, and it explains the techniques poets use to create their effects" --.

Presents a discussion on how to understand poetry.

Presents a discussion on how to understand symbolism in literature, discussing the appearance of journeys, eating, drowning, rain, violence, sex, illness, geography, Christ figures, and other signifiers, and how to see patterns the way literature professors do.

Contains biographical profiles of twelve American poets of the modern era, including Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, and Langston Hughes, and includes examples and analyses of their writing.

An exploration of poetry and feeling, presenting poems selected by the author as emblematic because they suggest something crucial about the nature of poetry itself, and offering his insights on how the poems should be read.

Offers advice on how people can educate their own judgement as readers of modern poems and learn to decide for themselves what they like or love, and what they find boring or inaccessible.

"A Meridian book." Describes how poetic techniques create meaning, the difference between poetry and prose, and includes 200 poems.

Examines the lives and poetry of leading contemporary American poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell, covering their style, themes, and more, with examples of their work and short bibliographies.