Sonnet 116 stakes the speaker's writing on love that never changes. Explore the full poem, its argument, and the final couplet's bold wager in our reading.
A petrarchan sonnet pairs an ABBAABBA octave with a sestet and a turning point. Learn how its structure shapes meaning and differs from Shakespeare's. Read on.
The apostrophe literary device turns description into an address to the absent, the dead, or nature. Learn what that shift reveals in the article's examples.
A Shakespearean sonnet builds its argument in three quatrains and a couplet. An annotated Sonnet 18 shows how form shapes meaning. Explore the reading method.
An AABB rhyme scheme links neighboring lines in couplets. Compare AABB with ABAB and explore Blake, Stevenson and Auden through examples. See how it works.
Learn how to write a haiku from a real observation, using two images, a seasonal hint, and a pause. Compare Japanese and English approaches in the article.
Read three Robert Frost poems in full, including “The Road Not Taken,” with notes on style, essential works, collections, and his life. Explore the poems.
Learn how five literary devices, from metaphor to alliteration, shape a sentence's meaning and sound, with examples for reading and writing. See how they work.
What is a haiku? A Japanese poem shaped by a season word and a cut between two images, not just 5-7-5. Explore the form and why syllable counts mislead.
What is a sonnet? Learn how fourteen lines, rhyme patterns, and the volta shape its meaning, with Italian and English forms explained. Read the article.
Explore 11 types of poems, from sonnets to erasure poems, with the rule that defines each and an example showing why it works. See all 11 forms explained.
Learn how a rhyme scheme works with AABB in “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” common patterns, and practice stanzas with answers. See the examples and try it.
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Comrades in Verse, a few notes for your fine ears on this lovely Day of Matriarchs: 1) To those culminating their MFA coursework and Theses, CONGRATULATIONS! The journey begins now! Our eyes and ears await you eagerly. 2) May is behaving kindly. This is *obviously* karmatic, so everyone be nice, and write nice poems, and pet puppies on the street, and drink lots of mint julepy things. 3) Happenings in New York City this coming week to keep us all merry, together, and listening: ——————————– Monday, 5/10: My dear friend, long-time workshop mate and rockstar BRANDON KREITLER, winner of the “Discovery”/Boston Review Prize, is being presented with said honor and reading from his poems at the 92Y. ——————————– Tuesday 5/11: Our own Adam Fitzerald & Bianca Stone’s LADDER POETRY SERIES with a killer line-up of Ashbery, Zapruder and Landau: ——————————– Wednesday 5/12: Columbia: A Journal Issue 48 Launch Reading Featuring [...]