Grammatical Structure

Abstract

We have already noticed that poetry in the twentieth century has been freed from rigid constraints on poetic structure. This has meant that poets had to compensate for the loss of traditional poetic form by using the resources of the language to the full. One result is that grammatical structure has been exploited more extensively than in previous eras. This chapter illustrates the main uses of grammatical structure in poetry, including the exploitation of phrase structure and clause structure, the echoing of spoken style, the use of parallel structures and repetitions, tense, word order and finally the symbolic use of grammatical elements.