In class today when we discussed "the science of poetry" I found the topic sort of oxymoronic. I'm not a poet or an especially artsy person, but I've never considered poetry to be at all scientific. I've been taught about the rhyme schemes of poetry, and the different meters, but I see them as literary devices to enhance the poem, and not really anything scientific. I feel like we were empirically trying to dissect poems; and like Britt said, they are written as performance pieces, and not particularly as literature to be picked apart and scrutinized. The linguistics of poems are perhaps not what readers should focus on, instead focusing on the "meaning," thoughts, and images meant to be evoked.

Also, I was wondering how long the concept of meter has been around and widely known. I looked it up on Wikipedia and although I could find no specific date of its origin, it has been around for a long time, at least since the 15th century. I guess when I think of poets writing their poetry, I don't see them emphasizing the meter as much as the actual content of the poem. Then again, as I said poetry is meant to be performed, so perhaps they're forced to do both at the same time.

There seems to lie a difference between structured poetry, filled with rhyme scheme and meter, and free verse type poetry, where poets just put feelings and thoughts on paper with no real structure. When I think of poetry the latter comes to mind first, before poetry with structure.