How to Be Absurdly Well-Versed in Poetry

A fast and easy way to learn about many types of poems

Sidewalk poets / Credit: Abi Ismael via Unsplash

Suppose you woke up one day and realized, tragically, that your entire knowledge of poetry consisted of the lyrics to “American Pie.” Even on that one, you’re a little shaky about what comes after, “Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry.”

Or suppose you’ve spent years reading Dr. Seuss rhymes to your children and still can’t identify their meter, not even the thumping anapestic tetramenter of lines like, “And to THINK/that I SAW/it on MUL-/ber-ry STREET.” Who could help you make up for lost time?

You might start with E.O. Parrott, the British editor who compiled How to Be Well-Versed in Poetry, an amusing book of examples of almost every verse form in English. Parrott’s genius has been to collect hundreds of brief, witty poems that use light verse to describe poetic forms and techniques.

Here’s the beginning of a poem by Martin Fagg about heroic couplets: “A form with very tight parameters,/ Heroic Couplets use pentameters.” And here’s a poem about the clerihew, invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley and typically about a specific person: “E.C. Bentley/Quite accidently/Invented this verse form of wit/And this is it.”