Experiencing Poetry welcomes readers into the field of empirical literary studies by connecting familiar aspects of poetry with scholarly concepts and research methods. The result is an engaging book for students or scholars who are new to the psychological study of poetry and its effects.

Chantelle Warner, University of Arizona, USA

The chapters present a number of interesting methodological approaches that the authors themselves have implemented...As with all kinds of linguistic experience and ability, the evidence from direct and indirect assessment will show how, in the experiencing of poetry, language interfaces with other faculties of the mind.

Scientific Study of Literature

Experiencing Poetry by Willie van Peer and Anna Chesnokova is a new volume exploring the concept of 'psychopoetics', 'the study of the psychological experience of literature, and more specifically, of poetry in its various aspects and meanings'. Using stylistic approaches and empirical methods to analyse a range of poems for their prototypical features against established theoretical models, readers are presented with an insightful discussion of poems under novel chapter headings such as Poetry is Madness and Poetry is Prettiness.

Marina Lambrou, Kingston University, UK

This is a recommendable, innovative and inspiring book … [It] is a highly useful introduction, especially for students, to the new field of empirical reader research … It deserves broad attention, especially as its usefulness is amplified by a comprehensive bibliography, a detailed glossary of rhetorical and statistical terms as well as such helpful “ancillary resources”.

Journal of English and American Studies