A new, engaging resource for poets has come out this year. A Poet’s Glossary by Edward Hirsch is the reference work you would expect from the name and a readable commonplace-type book to boot. The interconnections between words and examples given for each term do not come from a dead literature professor collecting dust on tenure, but a poet who sounds as if he would be routinely in the running for favorite teacher.

The Washington Post says Hirsch “explains each term in clear, direct prose, often moving from a general definition to a layered explanation of how each term has evolved over time. Take, for example, the opening entry, abecedarian, which begins, ‘An alphabetical acrostic in which each line or stanza begins with a successive letter of the alphabet.’ Many readers have seen this ancient form but may not know that it was often employed for sacred texts. Hirsch explains this connection and highlights a psalm in the Bible as well as poems by St. Augustine and Chaucer within just a few lines.”

Hirsch is the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.