This book has three distinctive characteristics: (1) It offers a widely interdisciplinary perspective; (2) It provides a comprehensive view of poetry, with groups of chapters on the Sound Stratum of Poetry (rhyme patterns and gestalt theory; metre and rhythm; expressiveness and musicality of speech sounds); the Units-of-Meaning Stratum (semantic representation and information processing, metaphor, rhyme and meaning, literary synaesthesia); the World Stratum; Regulative Concepts (genre, period style, archetypal patterns); the Poetry of Orientation and Disorientation (experiential and mystic poetry versus poetry of emotional disorientation; and the grotesque); the Poetry of Altered States of Consciousness (hypnotic and ecstatic poetry); Critics and Criticism; and Cognitive Poetics vs. Cognitive Linguistics; (3) It goes into minute details of poetic texts, so as to account for subtle intuitions of readers. Updating from the first edition consists of samples from the authors later instrumental study of the rhythmical performance of poetry and the expressiveness of speech sounds; and in three chapters responding to the later work of three cognitive linguists.

Reuven Tsur is Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature and Cognitive Poetics at Tel Aviv University, and Middle East vice president of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics.