Bernhardt and Wysoki
Poetry has recently fascinated me for being something that we predominantly encounter in print, while its origins and structures are dictated by vocal performance. Rhyme, the repetition of sounds, rhythm, iambic pentameter etc. work because of the way words sound when arranged in a certain way. It could be that doing this organizes the content cognitively, as Bernhardt suggests the visual elements of a text do in writing. I know that, while I hear poetry in my head when I read it, that hearing is pretty distant from any experience actually hearing poetry performed. This might be why iambic pentameter didn't make any sense to me when I first encountered Shakespeare in middle school (I still can't quite grasp it). While I think written poetry is meant to replicate or be a source for the auditory experience, the visual presentation of it doesn't provide that unless you know how something is meant to be read. Consider the visual arrangement of a poem in your Norton Anthology o...