Stone’s throw

When the first glorious outpouring of a poem has happened, the poet’s next concern is the way it will develop. For a poet who writes in a variety of styles, questions of whether or not it should have rhyme and metre are near the top of the list; but in either traditional or free verse patterns, another important consideration is the poem’s rhythm.

Dictionary definitions of rhythm link it with metre; but it might be useful to think of metre as the mathematical structuring of stressed and unstressed syllables, while rhythm has more to do with the flow and feel of the words. This may sound amorphous, but rhythm implies a subtlety of sound that