Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-138) and index.

Schemes -- Verse Systems -- Accentual-Syllabic Verse -- The pentameter line and others -- Versification -- Monostich -- Blank verse -- Fourteeners -- Rhyming -- Couplets -- Tercets -- Quatrains -- Other stanzaic forms -- Kinds of sonnet -- Accentual Meters -- Old English -- Sprung rhythm -- Skeltonics -- Pure Syllabic Verse -- Haiku -- Cinquain -- Free Verse -- Aberrant Forms -- Antiverse -- Pattern-poem -- Concrete poem -- Ode Forms -- Quantitative Verse -- Classical Meters and Their Adaptations -- Elegiacs -- Alcaics -- Hendecasyllabics -- Acrostics -- Echo verse -- Repetitive Structures -- Carol and refrain -- Villanelle -- Sestina -- Ballade -- Rondeau -- Triolet -- Pantoum -- Blues and thirty-two bar standard song -- Comical Schemes -- Limerick -- Clerihew -- Double-dactyl -- Rhetorical Schemes -- Epic simile -- Zeugma -- Anacoluthon -- Apostrophe -- Anaphora -- Homoeoteleuton -- Chiasmus -- Variation and Mimesis -- Imitative form -- Representative versification -- More on Rhyming -- Anomalous rhyming -- Laisses -- Line indentation -- Blank-verse sonnet -- Uncommon Schemes -- Unequal couplet -- Pushkin's stanza -- Canzone -- Rondel and roundel -- Rondeau redouble -- Accentual hexameters -- Ad hoc rhythms -- Leonine Rhyme -- Rhopalics -- Tanka -- Pantun -- Ghazals -- Luc-bat -- Patterns in Practice.

"In this classic text, the distinguished poet and critic John Hollander surveys the schemes, patterns, and forms of English verse, illustrating each variation with an original and witty self-descriptive example. This substantially expanded and revised edition includes a section of examples taken from centuries of poetry that exhibit the schemes and patterns he has described. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.