Poetry Techniques: the Poet's Toolkit

RAID is an ancronym for elements of the poet's toolkit: Restrictions, Adaptations, Innovations and Derivations.

Restrictions: Poetry takes its form from restrictions - restrictions of sound (rhyme, assonance, consonance ...); restriction of form (meter, fixed forms, content); restriction of language (grammar, rhetoric, aesthetics).

Adaptations: Poetry is constantly adapting. ... across languages, translations, media

Innovations: Poetry in new forms, new aesthetic sense

Derivations: visual poetry, mathematical poetry, computer language poetry, machine generated poetry ...

One of the more common classifications for the "traditional" toolkit by Lewis Turco in The New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics. He organizes poetics into 4 levels:

• typological level
• sonic level
• sensory level
• ideational level

Also see Lewis Turco's Poetry: an introduction through writing. Note that Turco uses the same organizational scheme in Poetry: An Introduction through Writing.

However, it seems that each introduction to poetry has its own ordering scheme. Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry by John Frederick Nims (and David Mason for later editions), organizes his material into 6 categories:

• senses
• emotions
• words
• sounds
• rhythms
• mind

On this site, the indexing allows you to follow either classification.