The average reader will have been raised with little exposure to poetry beyond Mother Goose, and while some vague sense perdures that poetry must have a strong rhythm and while the conviction that rhyme has something essential to do with the art seems stronger than ever, the reader will be at a loss to recognize the iambic pentameter – the paradigmatic line of English verse – when confronted with it.

And yet, increasingly, people do want to learn to recognize these things; they do want to understand an art form that is as ancient as civilization itself, and they want to do so all the more because of a sense that something precious has nearly slipped away. We are to be relieved, perhaps even grateful, therefore that, while the intuitive and practical understanding of verse has much retreated, the study of prosody has much improved from previous centuries.

A look at three contemporary guides to the craft of poetry.