>>Oh heck no. Those two can stay in prose, dammit. Life-mate adds Bacchus to the list of crazy deities that will make my poetry complex.<<

LOL yes.

>>Yeah, that's about where I am right now. I like poetry, but some of the underlying things are tricky for me to pin down what's going on where.<<

You'll get the hang of it. Coming at it sideways, instead of directly on the poetry stuff, I found linguistics and psychology helpful too.

>>Yup, fitting the pattern here too. I'm looking up more structured forms right now, because it seems like a good way to use "training wheels" for things like meter and stress-unstressed syllables.<<

Exactly.

You might look at sonnet variations. Most are rhymed and metered, but a few aren't. When you start from a single base and then change one thing at a time, it's easier to see how that affects the results. Frex, two basic patterns are three quatrains and a couplet, or an octet and a sestet. The first is good for beginning-middle-end and moral, the second for point and counterpoint. So you can suit the structure to the storytelling. Then if you switch to a shorter one like the indriso, you can experiment with how it condenses ideas.

>> Thanks for all the encouragement! <<

You're welcome! I like poetry. If I encourage poets, there will be more and better poems.