Whew. That was a learning curve. As of tonight, I now know how to do tables. If you're curious, you use  
< table > 
< tr > 
< td > stuffstuffstuffcolumn1 < /td>
< td > stuffstuffstuffcolumn2 < /td>
< td > stuffstuffstuffcolumn3 < /td>
< /tr >
< /table >

The td tag has all the good stuff like < td valign = "top" width = "200" >. Took me forever to figure out that I had to put < poem > tags around the stuffstuffstuff, i.e., < td > < poem >  stuffstuffstuffcolumn1 < /poem> < /td> for each column.