In Grammar for Poets, Michael Ryan compares the “fixed word-order” of the English language to a “mystery novel whose plot we already know.” Ryan’s point stands very true. Although the English language could be thought to be very complex and capable of innumerable variations, it really isn’t. It’s a repetitive cycle of just a noun following a verb that has already followed a subject. That’s really what it boils down to, just an endless game of MADLIBS. Poetry however, adds a little twist to the average sentence that we are all so used to, and extremely professional at forming. Poetry has the ability to cut sentences up into lines and in the words of Ferdinand de Saussure, “produces a unique kind of musical meaning that explands the meaning of sentences as they unfold. In Frederick Douglass by Hayden for example, the 14-lined poem is technically all one sentence that inevitably is unable to follow the regular S-V-O form. By doing this, the poem is rhythmic and more powerful. It turns what a could be a boring history book paragraph about a historical figure into a beautiful work of art and sound: “this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro / where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, / this man, superb in love and logic, this man.” Or in What the Living Do by Marie Howe, although this poem is more story-telling than rhythmic, it still remains to be, well, rhythmic. This is due to the way that the sentences are split up into lines, and how sometimes the S-V-O law is defied and sometimes subjects, verbs, or nouns are not mentioned but up to the reader to figure out. This is demonstrated throughout the poem’s entirety but can be found in these specific lines: “I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. / Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called / that