<P> Understanding Poetry was an American college textbook and poetry anthology by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, first published in 1938 . The book influenced New Criticism and went through its fourth edition in 1976 . </P> <P> The textbook "widely influenced...the study of poetry at the college level in America ." The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has named the book one of the "Fifty best books of the century ." </P> <P> Understanding Poetry, according to an article at the Modern American Poetry Web site, "codified many of the so - called New Critical ideas into a coherent approach to literary study . Their book, and its companion volume, Understanding Fiction (1943), revolutionized the teaching of literature in the universities and spawned a host of imitators who dominated English departments well into the 1960s ." </P> <P> Even those who are highly critical of the textbook's approach to poetry have acknowledged the reach and influence of the volume . Poet Ron Silliman has called it "the hegemonic poetry textbook of the period ." </P>

Understanding poetry by brooks and warren encapsulates the principles of