WORDS OUT OF ORDER: INVERSION Another device of poetry is the
changing of the usual order of words.  This is called inversion,
and is found mostly in the work of older classical poets.  But it
is sometimes used by modern writers for the sake of emphasis. 
<a
href="http://history.cc.ukans.edu/carrie/stacks/authors.dickenson
.html" target="other">Emily Dickinson</a> was fond of arranging
words outside of their
familiar order.  For example in "<a
href="http://199.233.193.1/cybereng/poetry/poems/emily_dickenson.
html#chartless" target="other">Chartless</a>" she
writes "Yet know I how the heather looks" and "Yet certain am I
of the spot." Instead of saying "Yet I know" and "Yet I am
certain" she reverses the usual order and shifts the emphasis to
the more important words.  In these lines she calls attention to
the swiftness of her knowledge and the power of her certainty.
Similarly in "<a
href="http://199.233.193.1/cybereng/poetry/poems/love_in_jeopardy
.html" target="other">Love in
Jeopardy</a>" there is a peculiar
but logical inversion.  Humbert Wolfe wrote:
<p>
<ul>
Here by the rose-tree<br>
they planted once<br>
of Love in Jeopardy<br>
an Italian bronze.<p>
</ul>
Wolfe was describing an old statue and he wanted to suggest an
old-fashioned effect.  He got his "antique" effect partly by
using queer rhymes like "once-bronze," and "zither-together,"
partly by twisting the ordinary manner of
speaking.  Had he written "Once upon a time they erected (or
planted) a bronze figure named 'Love in Jeopardy' (or Danger)
next to a rose-tree" it would have seemed commonplace, and the
poet would have lost the quaintness of the picture as well as the
arresting oddity of phrasing. 
<p>
This is one reason why a writer chooses poetry rather than prose.
By a trick of a word or the turn of a phrase, he arrests the
attention of the reader, and makes him see old things 
in a new light.  Even the very shape of a poem says " Stop! 
Look! and Listen!"