Poetry and Poetic Form

Poetry is the most concentrated of literary text types. It compresses meaning into sound, image, rhythm, and shape, so that how a poem is arranged on the page becomes part of what it says. Reading poetry well means attending to language at the level of the syllable and the line, not just the sentence.

Line, stanza, and the shape of a poem

The basic unit of poetry is the line, and where a line ends matters. A line break can create emphasis, suspense, or surprise. When a sentence runs past the end of a line into the next, we call it enjambment; when a line ends with a natural pause or stop, that is end-stopping. Enjambment can pull a reader forward breathlessly, while end-stopping slows and steadies. Lines gather into stanzas, grouped units set off by spacing, which function somewhat like pa