how simple the line of many titles !

Mary Oliver paints a strong understanding of her grasp of poetic devices and in turn assists the reader in what they may have difficulty grasping. For myself, I find the line to be the most complicated thing to grasp when writing poetry of a specific kind that doesn't randomly rhyme when it feels the necessity or is simply free-verse. She goes into detail on the importance of each line (which to my surprise have their own name and importance to a piece of work) and the use to a piece of prose. Oliver is descriptive in her methods and provides bountiful examples in her explanations with help incredibly when trying to understand the inner mechanics of poetry and its select lines. She provides examples from Shakespeare to Charles Dickinson and points out the things that the reader (and myself especially) had not entirely noticed or fully appreciated.

"No two poems are exactly alike, even though both are written in, say, iambic pentameter rhyming couplets." (Page 56) This is probably what bewildered me the most - the realization that no one poem is the same as another despite being exactly the same in the manner in which it was written. So many poems and works of literary brilliance were all written in the same fashion and while acknowledging line is important have not exactly used it to its extreme purpose while writing my own poetry.