Introduction

1.  Meters

Accentual Verse    Dana Gioia

Syllabics: Sweeter Melodies    Margaret Holley

Counted Verse: Upper Limit Music    Paul Hoover

Iambic Meter    John Ridland

Blank Verse    Anthony Hecht

Anapestics    Charles O. Hartman

Trochaic Meter: Running with Abandon    Carl Phillips

Dactylic Meter    Annie Finch

Free Verse    Michelle Boisseau

Hendecasyllabics    Rachel Hadas

Quantitative Meter, including Alcaics    Rosanna Warren

Some Maverick Meters    John Frederick Nims


2.  Stanzas

Heroic Couplet: "The Bravest Sort of Verses"    Timothy Steele

Terza Rima: The Self-Engendering Muse    Felix Stefanile

Quatrain    John Hollander

Sapphics    Grace Schulman

Ottava Rima    Jacqueline Osherow

Spenser’s Eponymous    R. S. Gwynn

Décima: a Poetic Journey from Spain to New Mexico    Pat Mora


3.  Received Forms  

Folk Ballad    W.D. Snodgrass

Ballade: Exquisite Intricacy    Judith Barrington

Blues    Raymond Patterson

Carmena Figurata: Taking Shape    Jan D. Hodge

Epigram: Gists, Piths, and Poison-Pills    X.J. Kennedy

Ghazal: To Be Teased Into DisUnity    Agha Shahid Ali

Haiku    Jean Hyung Yul Chu

Hip Hop Rhyme Formations    Tracie Morris

Japanese-Style Linked Forms    William J. Higginson/Penny Harter

Clerihew & Limerick    Gail White

Litany Poem: A Wand Made of Words    Nancy Willard

Musical Form and Formalist Poetry    Rob Hardin

Pantoum: Postcolonial Pedigree    Vince Gotera

Prose Poem: Strange Tales and Bitter Emergencies    Maxine Chernoff/Michel Delville

Rap    D.J. Renegade

Rondeaus and Roundels    Tom Disch

Sestina: The End Game    Lewis Turco

Sonnet    Marilyn Hacker

Triolet: Trippingly on the Tongue    Kathleene West

Villanelle: Gymnastics    Maxine Kumin


4.  Principles for Formal Experimentation

Organic Form    Hilda Morley

Fractal Amplifications    Alice Fulton

Performance Poetry    Bob Holman

Beyond Found Poetry    Keith Tuma

List poem    David Lehman

Procedural Poetry: Intentions of Nonintention    Jena Osman

Nude Formalism:  A Sampler    Charles Bernstein

Oulipian Poetry    Aldon Neilsen

Fluency of Form: Three Inventions

Two American Verse Forms:
The Cinquain and the Quattern     Allison Joseph

The Low Coup as a Contemporary African American Verse Form Amiri Baraka

The Paradelle   Billy Collins

Predetermined Avant Garde Forms    Mark Wallace