August Poetry Discussion

Chapter 8 from A Poet's Craft

Photo by Ksenia Yakovleva on Unsplash

Each month, we review another chapter of Annie Finch’s A POET’S CRAFT. This month, chapter 8, is well-titled (a line from e.e. cummings): “What if a Much of a Which of a Word.”

Not quite Hallowe’en time! But in this chapter, author/poet Annie Finch speaks to how “modern studies show […] that rhythmical language is processed in a different part of the brain from prose and normal speech… which… reminds us of the power long believed to be held by rhymed words—the reason, for example, that witches’ spells always rhyme. Poets who bring rhyme… are harnessing a potentially mighty force” (page 205).