An indispensable guide for poets, readers, students, and teachers. ``The Poems Heartbeat may well be the finest general book available on prosody.``--Library Journal (starred review)``A provocative, definitive manual.``--Publishers WeeklyFinally back in print, this slender, user-friendly guide to rhyme, rhythm, meter, and form sparks ``intuitive and technical lightning-flashes`` for poets and readers curious to know a poems inner workings. Clear, good-humored, and deeply readable, Alfred Corns book is the modern classic on prosody--the art and science of poetic meter.Each of the books ten chapters is a progressive, step-by-step presentation rich with examples to illustrate concepts such as line, stress, scansion marks, slant rhyme, and iambic pentameter. ``By the books end,`` noted a rave review in The Boston Review, ``Corn, magi-teacher and impeccable guide, has taught the novice to become artist and magician.`` The Poems Heartbeat also includes a selected bibliography and encourages readers and students to carry their investigations further.The word ``line`` comes from the Latin linea, itself derived from the word for a thread of linen. We can look at the lines of poetry as slender compositional units forming a weave like that of a textile. Indeed, the word ``text`` has the same origin as the word ``textile.`` It isnt difficult to compare the compositional process to weaving, where thread moves from left to right, reaches the margin of the text, then shuttles back to begin the next unit . . .