Notes on Form: Second Thoughts on the Poetic Line

On the unfolding of sound and sense in poetry

When I first began writing poems, I knew no one who composed in meter and not many more who approved of the practice. I recall sitting in a graduate seminar, where one young woman opined that metrical poetry had had its day, but that the world had now progressed beyond such old conventions. Whether the advance was religious or merely technological, I ne…