The Mormon Mission To Africa,

My Feeling Is That Poetry Will Wither On The Vine If You Don't Regularly Come Back To The Simplest Fundamentals Of The Poem: Rhythm, Rhyme, Simple Subjects - Love, Death, War.

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.

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.

At Somewhere Around 10 Syllables, The English Poetic Line Is At Its Most Relaxed And Manageable.

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 Respond To.