Babies Are Not Brought By Storks And

The Lullaby Is The Spell Whereby The Mother Attempts To Transform Herself Back From An Ogre To A Saint.

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.

The Writing Of A Poem Is Like A Child Throwing Stones Into A Mineshaft. You Compose First, Then You Listen For The Reverberation.

Poetry Carries Its History Within It, And It Is Oral In Origin. Its Transmission Was Oral.

A Poem With Grandly Conceived And Executed Stanzas, Such As One Of Keats's Odes, Should Be Like An Enfilade Of Rooms In A Palace: One Proceeds, With Eager Anticipation, From Room To Room.