Sounds Good

Sounds Good offers a collection of 101 poems that have been chosen to illustrate the function of sound in poetry. It follows the publication of Ted Hughes's anthology By Heart, and was conceived as a companion to it. Whereas By Heart shows how important imagery is to the memorability of a poem, Sounds Good reveals how sound is organised within the poem and made to speak directly to the reader's imagination. The poems themselves have been arranged in such a way as to bring their musical qualities to the fore. Christopher Reid has also provided brief notes, approaching the poems from different and sometimes surprising angles, with the purpose of illuminating the processes, formal and linguistic, that have given them their vitality. Sounds Good can be enjoyed simply as a collection of some of the most beautiful poems in the English language; it can also be used as an aid to identify and explore the secret arts of poetry composition itself.