How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse

Foster argues that modern British poetry grows from the tradition of closed-form poetics, a “terse, controlled verse” form that obeys the rules regarding stanza form and meter set out in the poetic tradition of the past (52). While closed-form poetics may be more formally restricted than free verse, the constraints of the form often amplify meaning and give modern poets the challenge of experimenting within a prescribed space. While the form is associated with British poets who are closer to the roots of English literature, some American poets, including Robert Frost, who use unadorned language and modern diction are proponents of closed-form poetics.

Epic poems convey narrative in verse form. They stem from the oral tradition of poetry and in some cases feature repetition and elaborate similes so that they will be memorable to the tellers who pass them on through repetition. While the oldest forms of epic poetry in the Western tradition were unauthored, with the name Homer being given retrospectively to the author of the Ancient Greek epics The Odyssey and The Iliad, the form has achieved prominence in the English tradition, especially within the work of the 17th-century British poet John Milton and the 19th-century American Henry Longfellow.