Despite its terrible title, Stephen Fry’s ‘The Ode Less Travelled’ is an excellent and highly approachable book for anyone who wants to understand the mechanics of writing poetry. It also helps to explain what makes good poetry good and great poetry great. The following quote expresses very well something that I take as fundamental to an understanding of the power of poetry, and music for that matter:

‘The point I am anxious to make, is that metre is more than just a ti-tum ti-tum: its very regularity and the consequent variations available within it can yield a structure that EXPRESSES MEANING QUITE AS MUCH AS THE WORDS THEMSELVES DO.’
Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled