The form, the physical structure of a poem, refers collectively to line lengths, rhythms and patterns of rhyme. It includes both how the poem looks on the page and how it sounds when read out loud.

Using a general theory of poetic form employing universal principles rooted in the human language faculty, Russom argues that certain kinds of poetry tend to arise spontaneously in languages with ...

Her ground-breaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, ...