Dear SunWinkers!

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things:

Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–

Of cabbages–and kings–

And why the sea is boiling hot–

And whether pigs have wings.”

Lewis Carroll

Well, I got Len to write a poem, so pigs must have wings…..

Anyway, poetry is many things, and consists of many things, and we are going to talk about one of them. Today I want you to think about the placement of the words on the page.

Now, poetry is an oral medium. A good poem must be read out loud, both by the poet in the process of composition, and by the discerning reader.

It follows that the organization of a poem affects how it sounds when read out loud. When it is written in a fixed form, such as a ballad, the form is imposed on the content, and the content…