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The Ode Less Travelled

Unlocking the Poet Within

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The Ode Less Travelled

By: Stephen Fry
Narrated by: Stephen Fry
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About this listen

Stephen Fry believes that if you can speak and read English, you can write poetry. But it is no fun if you don't know where to start or have been led to believe that anything goes.

Stephen, who has long written poems, and indeed has written long poems, for his own private pleasure, invites you to discover the incomparable delights of metre, rhyme and verse forms.

Whether you want to write a Petrarchan sonnet for your lover's birthday, an epithalamion for your sister's wedding or a villanelle excoriating the government's housing policy, The Ode Less Travelled will give you the tools and the confidence to do so.

Brimful of enjoyable exercises, witty insights and simple step-by-step advice, The Ode Less Travelled guides the listener towards mastery and confidence in the Mother of the Arts.

©2005 Stephen Fry (P)2017 Random House AudioBooks Literary History & Criticism Words, Language & Grammar Writing & Publishing Witty
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Inspirational and thought provoking - without being difficult to understand. A must for beginners of poetry, and a great resource for amateur and professional poets alike. Stephen Fry displays a love of meaning and prosody that truly draws on the poet he claims lies within us all.

Inspirational

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Great coverage of topics central to poetry, beautifully spoken, flourishes of brilliant language and composition, covered some much loved poems... insights galore, expanded my understanding of poetry's inner workings. Would love if he'd covered The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in greater depth and completely as that poem is truly and utterly exquisite (5th edition, Ed Fitzgerald's)... but understandably too long for this book.

Masterful. Enjoyed every word. Funny & insightful

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Would you consider the audio edition of The Ode Less Travelled to be better than the print version?

I would prefer the printed version as I had to relisten to so many parts of the book as it is detail intensive and really only useful to those who take poetry writing very seriously.

What does Stephen Fry bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

HIs glorious voice and tempo that moves the book along.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Nope. My brains would have exploded.

Fabulous Book But Very Sophisticated Contents

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i have read this book and it is good on its own (as is the audiobook) but having the author read this brings so much more feeling to it and the overall effect is to bring it to life.

This audio brings the book to life

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always good to listen to Stephen Fry. love this book especially. it's the first book my wife bought me.

love the book. love the audio book.

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