How long does it take to read Rules for the Dance?
Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver takes about 3 hours 33 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 33 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1998. 194 pages, about 53,350 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 5 hours 56 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 33 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 13 minutes |
The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
For both readers and writers of poetry, here is a concise and engaging introduction to sound, rhyme, meter, and scansion - and why they matter. "The dance," in the case of this brief and luminous book, refers to the interwoven pleasures of sound and sense to be found in some of the most celebrated and beautiful poems in the English language, from Shakespeare to Edna St. Vincent Millay to Robert Frost. With a poet's ear and a poet's grace of expression, Mary Oliver helps us understand what makes a metrical poem work - and enables readers, as only she can, to "enter the thudding deeps and the rippling shallows of sound-pleasure and rhythm-pleasure."
Subjects: Theory, Versification, Authorship, History and criticism, Poetry, English poetry
