The Writing Of A Poem Is Like

The Writing Of A Poem Is Like A Child Throwing Stones Into A Mineshaft. You Compose First, Then You Listen For The Reverberation.

At Four Lines, With The Quatrain, We Reach The Basic Stanza Form Familiar From A Whole Range Of English Poetic Practice. This Is The Length Of The Ballad Stanza, The Verse Of A Hymn, And Innumerable Other Kinds Of Verse.

The Voice Is Raised, And That Is Where Poetry Begins. And Even Today, In The Prolonged Aftermath Of Modernism, In Places Where "open Form" Or Free Verse Is The Orthodoxy, You Will Find A Memory Of That Raising Of The Voice In The Term "heightened Speech".

Considering The Wealth Of Poetic Drama That Has Come Down To Us From The Elizabethan And Jacobean Periods, It Is Surprising That So Little Of Any Value Has Been Added Since.

When Mr Ackroyd Says That In The 18th Century, Stranglers Bit Off The Noses Of Their Victims, I Feel That He Probably Knows What He Is Talking About. I Just Wish He Hadn't Told Me.