Art proceeds according to principles discernible in works of art. Therefore, if one is asked for a good book about traditional metrics, a good answer is: The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats, or The Complete Poems of Ben Johnson. Two excellent books about so-called free verse are the two-volume Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams and The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. One of the most instructive books on short lines is The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. To learn a lot about the adaptation of ballad meter to modern poetry, an invaluable work is Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems. No instruction manual can teach as much as careful attention to the sounds in even one great poem.
- Robert Pinsky, opening his instruction manual The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide.
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