words on words

Fantasy – being able to take a poem and identify its form, make some intelligent remarks about its meter, or comment on the use of various

rhetorical devices such as

Zeugma
Anacoluthon
Apostrophe! (this one, maybe)
Anaphora
Homoeoteleuton
or my favorite, the
Chiasmus

I’ll define chiasmus – it’s a term for the general pattern of crossing of two pairs of elements.

This practice of studying the usage of words seems very archaic to me, almost obsolete. But I like knowing that it exists. Do poets and poetry editors and poetry critics still look out for things like this? “Fine chiasmus in line 10,” “stunning use of anaphora in the first stanza…”?

It’s charming in an old-fashioned, obsessive, word nerd kind of way. The technical terms of poetry.