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This is what rhyme does. In a couplet, the first rhyme is like a question to which the second rhyme is an answer. The first rhyme leaves something in... →
A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical age had no... →
For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French forms on the other. The choice is between the... →
The iambic line, with its characteristic forward movement from short to long, or light to heavy, or unstressed to stressed, is the quintessential... →
The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint.
No poet is required to write in stanzas, or indeed in regular forms at all. Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode' has a rhyme scheme and... →
One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.
At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable.
Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate.
I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon.
In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.
Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.
Lyric poetry is, of course, musical in origin. I do know that what happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for... →
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