Poetry, Plato, and the Problem of Beauty – Student Book (Second Edition)

Using Plato’s Dialogues and Socratic questioning as a source of ideas and a way of thinking about the complex problem of beauty, Poetry, Plato, and the Problem of Beauty continues the study of poetic techniques and poems. Is beauty relative? Is it a mystery? Poetry helps us look at these questions.

As with the other books in the series, this book provides an in-depth, detailed exploration of sound, meter, stanza, and figures of speech. However, students are also asked to explore concepts such as the complex world of technique and the Socratic paradox: “I only know that I know nothing.” The book contains numerous quotations from Plato and Aristotle.

The poems of many of the most illustrious poets are featured in this volume, including Thomas Gray, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Blake, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Alexander Pope, John Milton, e.e. cummings, Sylvia Plath, Ralph Hodgson, Herman Melville, John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Ben Jonson, Robinson Jeffers, Christina Rossetti, and William Wordsworth, as well as original works by Michael himself.

Students will come away from this book with a profound understanding of the illusive nature of beauty and the many ways in which poets have explored it through poetry.

As a special feature, this book contains QR codes that link to audio of Michael reading the poems.