Before we begin take a look at some individual patterns in poetry, it might be helpful to step back and take a broader look at patterns and how they exist in the natural world around us. If you hike through a forest path on a summer day, you might notice the curl of a fiddlehead frond, the rough bark and stretching arms of a sycamore tree, or the intricate web of a spider. And from all this, you might conclude that there are thousands, if not millions, of shapes and patterns in the universe. But surprising you would be wrong. Although there are many variations on a theme, there are actually only a few basic patterns that repeat time and again in nature.

These reoccurring patterns include:

The spiral The meander The explosion Branching patterns 120 degree joints

Peter S. Stevens, who wrote the influential book Patterns in Nature, says that things evolve to their fittest form. The form that best serves its purpose.

Similarly architect Christopher Alexander contends that there are some patterns that are instrinsically pleasing to the eye or the ear. In his quest to discover these timeless patterns, he studied Turkish prayer shawls and beadwork. To his surprise, when he asked people from different backgrounds and cultures to compare two different shawls or two different beads, their answers were surprisingly similar. From this, he concluded that beauty is less subjective than we think. Factors such as centeredness, symmetry, effective use of positive and negative space were important factors in determining whether something was considered alluring.

Could this also be true with poetry? Are there word and sound patterns that have evolved to capture a certain kind of truth or beauty. I'm not sure. Although there appears to be an unlimited number of ways to arrange words on the page, there are actually certain patterns that get repeated over and over again. In this website you will learn about a few of these. I encourage you to delve into these patterns and explore ways that you can make them your own. Don't think of patterns as tight and restrictive but rather as the beams of a house that you are building.