An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of vari….

English poetry begins whenever we decide to say the modern English language begins, and it extends as far as we decide to say that the English langua….

I've not been a prolific poet, and it always seemed to me to be a bad idea to feel that you had to produce in order to get... credits. Production of ….

The lullaby is the spell whereby the mother attempts to transform herself back from an ogre to a saint..

Generally speaking, rhyme is the marker for the end of a line. The first rhyme-word is like a challenge thrown down, which the poem itself has to res….

When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with mo….

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 ba….

I don't see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem..

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.….

It normally happens that if you put two words together, or two syllables together, one of them will attract more weight, more emphasis, than the othe….

Composers need words, but they do not necessarily need poetry. The Russian composer, Aleksandr Mossolov, who chose texts from newspaper small ads, ha….

For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French forms on the other. The choice is between the nu….

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 ve….

Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open to accusations ….

Great poetry does not have to be technically intricate..

Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral..

Those who actually set out to see the fall of a city or those who choose to go to a front line, are obviously asking themselves to what extent they a….

There is no objection to the proposal: in order to learn to be a poet, I shall try to write a sonnet. But the thing you must try to write, when you d….

Imitation, if it is not forgery, is a fine thing. It stems from a generous impulse, and a realistic sense of what can and cannot be done..

The basic rhymes in English are masculine, which is to say that the last syllable of the line is stressed: "lane" rhymes with "pain", but it also rhy….

Hearing that the same men who brought us 'South Park' were mounting a musical to be called 'The Book of Mormon,' we were tempted to turn away, as fro….