Eavan Boland (1944–2020)

There are good things about this anthology. The explanations of the forms are clear and concise. For the most part, the examples chosen serve the book well in illustrating each form, and the attempt at including diverse voices, which Strand and Boland discuss in their Introductory Statement, is laudable. The prose is readable and poetic.

Those positives were balanced out, however, by a pretty large flaw: for an anthology of English language poetic forms, there are a lot of forms not found in The Making of a Poem.

This book omits not just obscure forms, forms only recently introduced into the accepted canon of English poetry at the time of publication (such as the ghazal), or variations on included forms, but also widely used, popular forms that one would expect in a book of this type, such as the limerick, any of the variations of the cinquain, or the rondeau (of In Flanders Field fame).

Ultimately, the omission of multiple important forms felt like a lack of follow through on the premise of the book.… (mere)