The Craft of Poetry: Structure and Sound

In this book, we’ll discuss the structure of the poem, canto, stanza, and line, even to the molecular level, discussing how the sounds of certain letters or letter combinations in certain words affect the reader; whether and why the length or brevity of a line or stanza has a certain effect on the reader; how to construct sentences within the poem so they are most effective; the use of punctuation in poetry; the use of meter in poetry, intentional or otherwise; alliteration, assonance, and consonance; the purposes and types of rhyme and its effectiveness or ineffectiveness; the art and necessity of observation, the ability of the poet to sense our world intimately, then report what she senses to the reader; and, overall, how to siphon from the ether an abstract, an emotion, and put it into fixed form, a poem, in such a way that the reader can experience the same emotion. We’ll also discuss common misconceptions.