| Introductory Statement | xiii |
| On Becoming a Poet | xvii |
| Poetic Form: A Personal Encounter | xxv |
| Acknowledgments | xxxi |
| I | Verse Forms | |
| Overview | 3 |
| The Villanelle | |
| The Villanelle at a Glance | 5 |
| The History of the Form | 6 |
| The Contemporary Context | 8 |
| Villanelle of His Lady's Treasures | 9 |
| The House on the Hill | 9 |
| Missing Dates | 10 |
| The Waking | 11 |
| One Art | 11 |
| Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night | 12 |
| The World and the Child | 13 |
| Condemned Site | 13 |
| By the Sound | 14 |
| Saturday at the Border | 15 |
| Under the Hill | 16 |
| Villanelle | 16 |
| Reading Scheme | 17 |
| Villanelle for the Middle of the Night | 18 |
| Close-Up of a Villanelle: "One Art" | 19 |
| The Sestina | |
| The Sestina at a Glance | 21 |
| The History of the Form | 22 |
| The Contemporary Context | 24 |
| Ye wastefull woodes, bear witness of my woe | 25 |
| from Old Arcadia | 26 |
| Sestine 4 from Parthenophil and Parthenophe | 27 |
| Sestina: Of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni | 29 |
| Sestina | 30 |
| Sestina | 32 |
| Sestina of the Tramp-Royal | 33 |
| Sestina: Altaforte | 34 |
| After the Trial | 36 |
| The Book of Yolek | 37 |
| The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina | 38 |
| Nani | 39 |
| Close-Up of a Sestina: "Sestina: Altaforte" | 41 |
| The Pantoum | |
| The Pantoum at a Glance | 43 |
| The History of the Form | 44 |
| The Contemporary Context | 45 |
| In Town | 45 |
| Pantoum of the Great Depression | 47 |
| Parents' Pantoum | 48 |
| Pantoum | 49 |
| Grandmother's Song | 50 |
| The Method | 51 |
| Close-Up of a Pantoum: "Pantoum of the Great Depression" | 53 |
| The Sonnet | |
| The Sonnet at a Glance | 55 |
| The History of the Form | 56 |
| The Contemporary Context | 58 |
| Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? | 59 |
| Farewell to Love | 59 |
| from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus | 60 |
| Sonnet XXIII: Methought I saw my late espoused saint | 60 |
| Holy Sonnet: At the round earth's imagined corners | 61 |
| Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 | 61 |
| Ozymandias | 62 |
| Bright Star | 62 |
| from Monna Innominata | 63 |
| from Sonnets from the Portuguese (XLIII) | 63 |
| Carrion Comfort | 64 |
| What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why | 64 |
| From the Dark Tower | 65 |
| Epic | 65 |
| from "Tulips and Chimneys" | 66 |
| To My Mother | 66 |
| After the Bomb Tests | 67 |
| A Game of Chess | 67 |
| The Haw Lantern | 68 |
| Heat | 68 |
| The Roman Baths at Nimes | 69 |
| Half a Double Sonnet | 69 |
| Sonnet | 70 |
| Close-Up of a Sonnet: "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" | 71 |
| The Ballad | |
| The Ballad at a Glance | 73 |
| The History of the Form | 74 |
| The Contemporary Context | 77 |
| The Cherry-tree Carol | 78 |
| Sir Patrick Spens | 79 |
| The Wife of Usher's Well | 81 |
| My Boy Willie | 82 |
| The Changeling | 83 |
| from The Ballad of Reading Gaol | 86 |
| Peter and John | 88 |
| Bagpipe Music | 90 |
| Death in Leamington | 91 |
| The Tale of Custard the Dragon | 92 |
| We Real Cool | 94 |
| Riverbank Blues | 94 |
| Ballad of John Cable and Three Gentlemen | 95 |
| Close-Up of a Ballad: "We Real Cool" | 99 |
| Blank Verse | |
| Blank Verse at a Glance | 101 |
| The History of the Form | 102 |
| The Contemporary Context | 104 |
| from his translation of The Aeneid | 105 |
| from Tamburlaine the Great | 105 |
| from Julius Caesar | 106 |
| from Paradise Lost | 107 |
| from Beachy Head | 108 |
| from The Prelude | 109 |
| Ulysses | 110 |
| Rain | 112 |
| Directive | 113 |
| Lying | 114 |
| Stanzas in Bloomsbury | 117 |
| Close-Up of Blank Verse: "Directive" | 119 |
| The Heroic Couplet | |
| The Heroic Couplet at a Glance | 121 |
| The History of the Form | 122 |
| from The Description of Cooke-ham | 123 |
| The Author to Her Book | 123 |
| A Letter to Daphnis, April 2, 1685 | 124 |
| from Absalom and Achitophel | 125 |
| from The Vanity of Human Wishes | 126 |
| To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works | 127 |
| from The Deserted Village | 128 |
| from An Essay on Criticism | 129 |
| My Last Duchess | 130 |
| Strange Meeting | 132 |
| The J Car | 133 |
| Close-Up of the Heroic Couplet: "My Last Duchess" | 135 |
| The Stanza | |
| The Stanza at a Glance | 136 |
| The History of the Form | 137 |
| The Contemporary Context | 139 |
| from Troilus and Criseyde | 140 |
| from The Faerie Queene | 141 |
| They Flee from Me | 142 |
| Easter Wings | 143 |
| The Tyger | 143 |
| So We'll Go No More A-Roving | 144 |
| I died for Beauty--but was scarce | 145 |
| The Convergence of the Twain | 145 |
| The Song of the Mad Prince | 146 |
| A Quoi Bon Dire | 147 |
| Song of the Son | 147 |
| The Tropics in New York | 148 |
| Night Song at Amalfi | 149 |
| Not Waving but Drowning | 149 |
| On Teaching the Young | 149 |
| Those Winter Sundays | 150 |
| Yes | 150 |
| Warming Her Pearls | 151 |
| Epith | 152 |
| Close-Up of a Stanza: "I died for Beauty--but was scarce" | 154 |
| II | Meter | |
| Meter at a Glance | 159 |
| A Brief Checklist of Further Reading on Meter | 161 |
| III | Shaping Forms | |
| Overview | 165 |
| The Elegy | |
| Overview | 167 |
| Lament for the Makaris | 168 |
| If Ever Hapless Woman Had a Cause | 171 |
| On My First Son | 172 |
| Epitaph. On her Son H.P. at St. Syth's Church where her body also lies Interred | 172 |
| Lycidas | 173 |
| Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666. Copied out of a Loose Paper | 178 |
| Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard | 180 |
| R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida | 184 |
| O Captain! My Captain! | 185 |
| Dover Beach | 185 |
| To His Love | 187 |
| Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter | 187 |
| Tears in Sleep | 188 |
| In Memory of W. B. Yeats | 188 |
| from The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket | 191 |
| Dream Song 324 | 194 |
| To the Dead | 194 |
| In Memoriam Paul Celan | 196 |
| The Legend | 197 |
| The Elegy for New York | 198 |
| Tiara | 199 |
| Supernatural Love | 200 |
| Mirror in February | 202 |
| Iris | 203 |
| Child Burial | 204 |
| Song | 205 |
| The Pastoral | |
| Overview | 207 |
| The Passionate Shepherd to His Love | 209 |
| from Love's Labor's Lost | 210 |
| The Garden | 210 |
| To My Sister | 213 |
| Ode on a Grecian Urn | 214 |
| Loveliest of Trees | 215 |
| The Wife of Llew | 216 |
| Urban Pastoral | 216 |
| Remembered Morning | 217 |
| The Thought-Fox | 217 |
| The Explosion | 218 |
| Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota | 219 |
| Midsummer, Tobago | 220 |
| The Bear | 220 |
| Fog | 223 |
| Let Evening Come | 224 |
| Smoke | 224 |
| Meditation at Lagunitas | 226 |
| From the Porch | 227 |
| A Walrus Tusk from Alaska | 227 |
| Looking West from Laguna Beach at Night | 228 |
| The Broad Bean Sermon | 229 |
| Of the Finished World | 230 |
| Tornados | 231 |
| Loss | 232 |
| Waiting for the Storm | 233 |
| An Engraving of Blake | 233 |
| Pygmalion's Image | 233 |
| Mock Orange | 234 |
| The Black Walnut Tree | 235 |
| Gateposts | 236 |
| Heart of the Matter | 236 |
| Shoeing the Currach | 238 |
| The Ode | |
| Overview | 240 |
| Ode to the West Wind | 241 |
| To Autumn | 243 |
| Ode | 244 |
| The Fire of Driftwood | 245 |
| from The Bridge | 247 |
| The Paper Nautilus | 248 |
| Australia 1970 | 249 |
| Miracle Glass Co. | 250 |
| The Blue Swallows | 250 |
| America | 252 |
| Ode to Meaning | 252 |
| Perhaps the World Ends Here | 254 |
| IV | Open Forms | |
| Overview | 259 |
| The Circus Animals' Desertion | 260 |
| The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock | 262 |
| I, Too | 266 |
| The Idea of Order at Key West | 266 |
| Spring and All | 268 |
| America | 269 |
| Ave Maria | 272 |
| Uncertain Oneiromancy | 273 |
| Daddy | 274 |
| Diving into the Wreck | 276 |
| Move | 279 |
| The Language of the Brag | 280 |
| The Colonel | 281 |
| The German Army, Russia, 1943 | 282 |
| Starlight Scope Myopia | 282 |
| Reading Plato | 284 |
| Close-Up of Open Forms: "Diving into the Wreck" | 287 |
| A Brief Glossary | 289 |
| Biographies and Further Reading | 293 |
| Suggested Reading | 335 |
| Credits | 337 |
| General Index | 349 |
| Index of Authors, Titles, and First Lines | 357 |