Prose Poems

Many of the poems in Delights & Shadows are prose poems. These are poems that are not metered or rhymed and do not use traditional poetic line breaks. Even though prose poems use everyday language, they often employ some poetic elements, such as vivid imagery, repetition, and fragmentation. Prose poems can be of any length and focus on any subject. In Kooser's collection, "Surviving," "Flow Blue China," and "Screech Owl" are a few examples of prose poems.

Free Verse

Some of the poems in Delights & Shadows are written in free verse. This type of poetry does not use a specific kind of rhyme or meter—there is not a set limit to the number of syllables in a line, and there are no rules concerning the placement of stresses in the line. Instead, free verse employs a structure determined by the poet, in which the poem's pattern and...