How long does it take to read The Sounds of Poetry?
Robert Pinsky
The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky takes about 2 hours 31 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 31 minutes
An evening's read
First published 1998. 137 pages, about 37,675 words.
6 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 4 hours 11 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 31 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 34 minutes |
The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
As Poet Laureate, Pinsky is one of America's best spokesmen for poetry, In this book, writing plainly and specifically, for general readers as well as for poets, he explains in detail how the sounds of poetry embody the work of art that is "performed" in us when we read it aloud. Pinsky devotes clear, informative chapters to the sonic elements of poetry: accent and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, blank verse and free verse. He illustrates these with examples from the work of some fifty poets - from Shakespeare, Milton, and Emily Dickinson to William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Glock, C.K. Williams, and Frank Bidart.
Subjects: Oral interpretation of poetry, Poetry (poetic works by one author), Oral interpretation, Poetics
