Advanced Poets Society Forum The foundation of poetry

As a writer told me in a poetry workshop that met weekly among ten people in the back room at Chatterton's Book Store on Vermont Avenue in Hollywood, California--the essential element in poetry is rhythm.       If you think about music and ask: which came first, melody or rhythm? The answer in my opinion is rhythm.  The duplication of rhythm is the unconscious pre-natal memory of the mother's aortic pulse. Melody came later.     Therefore, invest your poetry with rhythm. Make that its inner foundation, its heartbeat.