Who has not tried to write a poem? The poetic form of words seems to be rather easy. In its basic form, which we learn as children, the rhyming couplet is, in a child's written and spoken words, pure joy - success! In the hands of a Shakespeare it is magnificent with a reach and understanding that the rest of us enjoy but are far from even attempting.

As we listen to various poetic forms, schools and movements we can only react with wonder at how these innocent words are assembled to create symphonies of ideas, wonder and revelation. The emotions they seek to invoke can be anything from happiness to sadness, from love to revulsion.

Arnold, Stevens, Keats, Akhmatova, Browning, Herrick, Hood, Killigrew are but a few of the roll-call of wordsmiths who with mere words create ravenous beauty that reveals tender lines and sensitive verse on how and why they are who they are.

01 - Poets on Poetry - An Introduction

02 - When I Write Poems by Anna Akhmatova

03 - Of My Poems by Thomas MacDonagh

04 - An Apology For Her Poetry by Duchess of Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish

05 - Sonnet 76 - Why is My Verse So Barren of New Pride by William Shakespeare

06 - The Austerity of Poetry by Matthew Arnold

07 - Of Modern Poetry by Wallace Stevens

08 - Poetry by Claude McKay

09 - The Poetry of Keats by George Meredith

10 - Future Poetry by Alice Meynell

11 - Sonnet 17 - Who Will Believe My Verse in Time to Come by William Shakespeare

12 - Poetic Eggs by Ezra Pound

13 - Poem by William Carlos Williams

14 - On the Grasshopper and Cricket by John Keats

15 - Ode on the Poetical Character by William Collins

16 - Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem by Alan Seeger

17 - A True Account of the Birth and Conception of a Late Famous Poem by Charles Sackville, Earl Of Dorset

18 - The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain by Wallace Stevens

19 - The Poet and the Poem by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

20 - Of English Verse by Edmund Waller

21 - Love, The Soul of Poetry by Anne Killigrew

22 - Why, If All Poets Crown Their Love with Verse by Emily Hickey

23 - Verse Making Was the Least of My Virtues by Robert Browning

24 - The Poet's Love-Song by Sarojini Naidu

25 - A Letter to a Brother of the Pen in Tribulation by Aphra Behn

26 - Not Every Day Fit for Verse by Robert Herrick

27 - On the Poetic Muse by George Moses Horton

28 - Sonnet - Written in Keats by Thomas Hood

29 - Sonnet 86 -Was It the Proud Full Sail of His Great Verse by William Shakespeare

30 - Song in Imitation of Shakespeare by James Beattie

31 - The High-toned Old Christian Woman by Wallace Stevens

32 - Poetry is a Destructive Force by Wallace Stevens

33 - To My Most Dearly Loved Friend Henry Reynolds Esquire of Poets and Poesie by Michael Drayton

34 - His Poetry His Pillar by Robert Herrick

35 - To Live Merrily and to Trust to Good Verses by Robert Herrick

36 - Poem for the End by Ivor Gurney