Iamb Unstressed stressed “What LIPS / my LIPS / have KISSED, / and WHERE, / and WHY…. ”[5] Trochee Stressed unstressed “DOUble / DOUble / TOIL and / TROUble, / FIre / BURN and / CAULdron / BUBble.”[4] Anapest Unstressed unstressed stressed “It was MAN/y and MAN/y a YEAR / ago, in a KING/dom by the SEA....”[3] Dactyl Stressed unstressed unstressed “CANnon to / RIGHT of them, / CANnon to / LEFT of them.…”[2] Spondee Stressed stressed “To a / GREEN THOUGHT, / in a / GREEN SHADE.”[1] Pyrrhic Unstressed unstressed “TO A / green thought, / IN A / green shade.”

English language poetry offers six rhythms: the iamb, the trochee, the anapest, the dactyl, the spondee, and the pyrrhic.

A period states, “This idea ends, and a new begins”; a semi-colon states, “This idea ends, but the next is closely related”; and a colon states, “What follows clarifies what came before.”

poems are often short enough that poets labor over every single word. Unlike stories, which are strings of sentences, a poem may contain no sentences at all, just fragments of speech and solitary words. Choosing the right word can be difficult. Words have denotations, or literal meanings, but words also carry connotations

There are epic poems that depict a mythic time of origins and beginnings, narrative poems that tell a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, and there are odes, poems that valorize a person, object, idea, or place. There are dramatic monologues, speeches given by a single speaker at an important moment, and there are even didactic poems, poems meant to teach. Any of these general categories could take on a closed form (such as a sonnet, discussed below), but they can also take on other forms such as blank verse and open verse.

Authors often write to express their own feelings on a subject, yes, but they also take on personas, a concept which comes from the Latin word for “mask.”

One of the perhaps oldest and lasting definitions of poetry considers it to be a special form of rhythmic speech. We begin to feel poetry before we begin to make meaning from it

special arrangements of words that qualify as poetry are subject to quite a bit of historical variability. Value judgments change. Yet despite this variability in tastes and judgments, certain technical features—craft elements—can be identified in common across all types of poetry.

reflect upon all the special uses of language that different societies throughout history have considered to be poetry, there seems to be little consensus.

poetry is a special way of using language, a heightened attention to the materiality of the words, the marks on the page, and vibrations in the air that create and convey all meaning.

literature is divided into genres or types, and these divisions are based on the form authors employ in their creation of their works.