For beginning or advanced students of poetry more focused on the art of structuring a poem,A Poet's Earserves as a handbook to writing in numerous fixed forms. Here, Annie Finch's remarkably in-depth introduction to poetic form in English opens a new and exciting world to contemporary poets. From the basic meters and traditional European forms of the ballad and the sonnet to poetic forms brought to English from worldwide cultures and postmodern forms and techniques,A Poet's Earserves as both a survey and a guide to the exploration of poetic form. More diverse and comprehensive than any other form handbook,A Poet's Earwill be essential to the serious student of poetry. Poet, translator, and critic Annie Finch is director of the Stonecoast low-residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. She is co-editor, with Kathrine Varnes, ofAn Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, and author ofThe Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse,Eve, andCalendars. She is the winner of the eleventh annual Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award for scholars who have made a lasting contribution to the art and science of versification.