There are sonnets about how to write sonnets, haiku about how to write haiku, and so on. The writing is clever, entertaining, and instructive, which will surprise no one familiar with Hollander's work. This book shatters stereotypes equating the study of prosody with poetry boot camp and instead introduces the fine art of versification. In clear bell tones that are this master poet's rhythmic signature, nuances of rhyme, rhythm, and meter are conveyed in precise, tactile language sensitive to history and etymology. Usually dry definitions are transformed into subtle image schemes that work as superior mnemonic devices.
Corn compares the composition of lines to weaving a thread slowly from left to right.
Metrical variations, usually muddled through by most texts, here receive their own lucid chapter that thoroughly prepares the poet for progressively more complex sections. Here's how to find her. Pretty much everything I had written before it was thrown in the wastebasket, along with all the bad habits T.S. Eliot inspires. Ten years later, I'm still learning from this book. Free of academic verbiage, the definitions not only inform, they often provoke and inspire.