Probably the most important technical resource, is connected with the most primitive impulses in our nature - for example, children’s games and tribal dances.
The word rhythm comes from a Greek word meaning to ‘flow’. Rhythm is really pulse: alternating periods of effort and relaxation, like heartbeats. The rhythms of nature may be irregular or regular, but are fundamental to life. Before people had books, the memorable quality of rhythm helped them remember important information, such as rules and tables.
The emotional excitement generated by rhythm, plus the picturesque use of words, gives poetry its graphic power of magical suggestion. It involves us more than a plain statement in prose of the same facts.
Rhythm is largely instinctive. Rhythm, thought and word should be inseparable. A poet’s ear and mind should support each other. Even irregular or free verse has a characteristic flow or rhythm, which cannot easily be defined, only sensed.
Technique is important to a poet, for however strong the inspiration or impulse to write a poem, the poet must have a command of the various devices which have been developed over hundreds of years.
The poet must, for example, have a good ear for ‘stress’- that is, the way some syllables in a word are more marked than others. It is the regular pattern of stress that governs the ‘metre’, or measure, of verse.
For example, in the word ‘doing’ we stress the ‘do’ more than the ‘ing’. In a sentence, we stress some words more than others. We use names based on Greek words to describe the various kinds of stresses. Each group of stresses is called a ‘foot’. An ‘iambic foot’, for example, consists of an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed one. ‘Delight’ is an example. In a ‘trochee’ the stress is the other way around - ‘banger’ for example. Other types of feet, containing more than two syllables, include the ’dactyl’, and the ’anapaest’. The ‘spondee’ has one heavy stress.
Rhyme is produced when the ends of words at the ends of two (sometimes more) lines of poetry sound alike, such as ‘near’ and ‘dear’. Some poets use words that look alike but do not sound alike, such as ‘love’ and ‘move’. These are called ‘eye-rhymes’.