An Interactive Journey Through

The Art of Poetry

Master meter, form, and technique through immersive visualization

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."

— William Wordsworth
Begin Learning Practice Exercises
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01

Meter & Rhythm

The heartbeat of poetry — patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables

Interactive Scansion

Click syllables to mark stress patterns. Try scanning famous lines.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
Meter: —
Pattern: —

Try These Famous Lines:

Metrical Feet

Iamb
da-DUM
"a-LONE"
Trochee
DUM-da
"GAR-den"
Spondee
DUM-DUM
"HEART-BREAK"
Dactyl
DUM-da-da
"MER-ri-ly"
Anapest
da-da-DUM
"in-ter-VENE"
Amphibrach
da-DUM-da
"ro-MAN-tic"

Rhythm Visualizer

Watch the rhythm come alive. Click play to animate the metrical pattern.

80 BPM
02

Poetic Forms

Architecture in verse — from sonnets to haiku

The Sonnet

14Lines
10Syllables/Line
3Variants

Rhyme Schemes

Shakespearean
A B A B C D C D E F E F G G

Example: Shakespeare's Sonnet 18

1 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? A

2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate: B

3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, A

4 And summer's lease hath all too short a date; B

03

Poetic Devices

The tools of craft — sound, imagery, and meaning

Aa

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds

Peter Piper picked a peck

~o~

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds

The rain in Spain stays mainly

buzz!

Onomatopoeia

Words that imitate sounds

Splash, buzz, whisper

Interactive Example

Hover over highlighted words to see devices in action

Select a poem to analyze its poetic devices

04

Poetry Through Time

From ancient epics to contemporary voices

Ancient800 BCE - 500 CE

Epic & Lyric Origins

Homer Sappho Virgil Ovid

Oral traditions, epic poetry, the birth of lyric verse

Medieval500 - 1500

Allegory & Courtly Love

Dante Chaucer Rumi

Divine Comedy, Canterbury Tales, troubadour tradition

Renaissance1500 - 1660

Sonnets & Humanism

Shakespeare Donne Milton

Petrarchan influence, metaphysical wit, Paradise Lost

Romantic1785 - 1850

Emotion & Nature

Wordsworth Keats Shelley Byron

Lyrical Ballads, the sublime, imagination as power

Victorian1837 - 1901

Doubt & Innovation

Tennyson Dickinson Hopkins

Dramatic monologue, spiritual crisis, American voices

Modern1900 - 1945

Fragmentation & Free Verse

Eliot Pound Yeats Hughes

The Waste Land, Imagism, Harlem Renaissance

Contemporary1945 - Present

Diversity & Identity

Heaney Oliver Vuong

Confessional, Beat, spoken word, global voices

05

Practice Arena

Test your knowledge with interactive exercises

Scansion Challenge

Score: 0 / 0

Mark the stressed (´) and unstressed (˘) syllables in this line:

Rhyme Scheme Identification

Score: 0 / 0

Identify the rhyme scheme of this stanza:

Your Progress

Scansion
0%
Rhyme Schemes
0%
Form Recognition
0%