The prosody of a poem is the poet's method of controlling the reader's temporal experience of the poem, especially his attention to that experience. The prosody, to function as a prosody, must be shared. Yet there is also an indirect communication. As traditional theorists partly recognised, prosody depends essentially on conventions. This may tempt us to distinguish poetry or verse from prose on the grounds that prose is less highly organized.
Organization disappoints two hopes prosodists have entertained.
But it does provide a set of tools for the analysis of prosody. What I have already said about the temporality of poems suggests that prosodic organization is rhythmic. Rhythm, in poetry, is the temporal distribution of the elements of language. According to this definition, all language unavoidably has rhythm. But it follows from my earlier definitions that poetry makes us especially aware of rhythm.