I recently started writing poems, and need some information about the proper punctuation for them. They are all rhyming poems. I know you can punctuate them different ways depending on how long you want pauses to be, etc... but I just need some general tips for punctuation, and I would also like to gain knowledge of some general poem terminology. Thanks!

Poems may be rhymed, have a regular meter, be punctuated -- or not.

Punctuation is the same as in non-poetic forms, except that line length is in itself a form of punctuation.

In the following prose-poem

"Archie Marcus
walked out and bought a little cyanide
for rats
and then o world all your trite viciousness
all your pointless triviality
ended
after the first five seconds
not even bitterness under his flaccid tongue"


See? No sentence punctuation, no exclamation marks, but the line length becomes a kind of punctuation which is a guide both to how to read it and to clarify the poet's intended meaning

The stanza is a set of lines within a poem. It may (or may not) contain a pattern of rhyme and meter that is repeated throughout the poem.

Blank verse is also unrhymed, but it has a meter -- iambic pentameter.

Free verse has neither regular meter nor rhyme.

There are many recurrance patterns, (rhyme and meter), too many to list here. You can find out more about them on any decent site, such as P.A.L.

There also you will find clear definitions of devices such as image, imagery (pattern of images), metaphor and symbol.