Poets are deep. You may have begun to notice that modern poets don't much like to follow a lot of rules. The stuff you scribble in your diary may have some value to you, but without some kind of discipline it most likely really is just scribbling. Common forms Blank verse , or unrhymed iambic pentameter, is one of the simplest forms, in that each line is essentially a new stanza. We've provided a chart below of some of the longer forms.
Diction refers to the language of a poem, and how each word is chosen to convey a precise meaning.
Poets are very deliberate in choosing each word for its particular effect, so it's important to know the origins and connotations of the words in a poem, not to mention their literal meaning, too. Fortunately, the Oxford English Dictionary will be available online beginning March, 2000. If you're a student, your university library will probably have a subscription. The OED offers many definitions for each word, and provides the time of their usage, so that when you're reading earlier poets, you can find the meaning of a word at the time the poem was written, and avoid interpretations only a modern reader would make. If you don't have access to the online version of the OED, you may wish to just purchase the latest edition of the multi-volume print version to carry around with you.