principles

There have been a number of great poets. There are some great living poets. Great poems should be a resource for wanna-be poets (like me, for instance).

I'm not talking about templates or body-snatching. I'm talking about the possibility of general principles encoded in great works, principles that occur in those works regardless of style or originality.

One general principle that is apparent to me: comprehensibility. 

A reader should not require a Vulcan mind-meld to know where he is and what's going on during the first four lines of a poem. 

There are more general principles.