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The study of rhetoric distinguishes between tropes, or figures of meaning such as metaphor and metonymy, and schemes, or surface patterns of words. Poetry is a matter of trope; and verse, of scheme or design.

— John Hollander

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More quotes by John Hollander

Contrastive stress is very important in English, as poems are full of invisible italicised contrasts of this kind.

The building blocks of poetry itself are elements if fiction -fable, 'image', metaphor-all the material if the nonliteral.

One crosses the brink of literalness into poetry by desiring , noticing, fixing on something and wondering what to make of it.

English Prosody has tended to be a subject for cranks.

'Poetic form' is a very deep matter that covers much more than phonological or typological pattern.

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