This volume on the formal study of poetry presents some of the most exciting actual thoughts on the theory of meter, including a broad range of addressed languages, such as English, Finnish, Estonian, Russian, Japanese, Somali, Old Norse, Latin, and Greek. Various theoretical approaches are brought together for the first time, including Optimality Theory, other constraint-based approaches, the Quantitative approach to verse, a mora-based approach, a semantic-pragmatic approach, and an alternative generative approach, generated in Estonia. The book will be of interest to both linguists interested in stress and speech rhythm, constraint systems, phrasing, and phonology-syntax interaction and poetry, as well as to students of poetry interested in the connection between language and literature