Grammar of Poetry

Grammar of Poetry is Matt Whitling's classical poetry textbook published by Canon Press, the Moscow, Idaho press founded by Douglas Wilson. The book teaches English poetry the way earlier centuries taught rhetoric, through formal analysis and imitation of specific verse forms, and it does so in thirty lessons pitched at upper-elementary through early high school.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical imitation; scansion, formal analysis, then composition
Worldview	Christian-Reformed (Canon Press imprint; Reformed classical-school tradition)
Grades	6-9 (designed for middle school; usable through freshman year)
Formats	Print student text, teacher's edition, DVD video course
Cost tier	Standard
Parent intensity	3
ESA-common	Varies
Accredited	No
Established	First edition 2002; Canon Press imprint; video course through Roman Roads Media
Website	canonpress.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Formal scansion, tropes, and imitation, the real classical move
Ease of teaching	4	Teacher's edition is genuinely useful; video supplements if the parent is unsure
Content quality	5	150+ poems; Shakespeare through Hopkins through tongue twisters
Flexibility	4	Thirty lessons can run a semester or a year
Value for money	4	$24 student, $26 teacher; full DVD bundle at $135
Worldview scope	3	Reformed classical framing; content-neutral enough to cross worldview lines
Visual/design	3	Restrained, typographic, classical-press aesthetic
Support resources	4	Teacher edition plus six-hour DVD course with Whitling himself

Who the publisher is

Canon Press is the Moscow, Idaho publishing house founded in 1988 as an arm of Christ Church and its associated institutions. The press is closely associated with Douglas Wilson, the Moscow pastor and classical-education advocate whose writings on classical Christian schooling, notably Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, helped drive the 1990s revival of the Christian classical school movement in the United States. Canon Press's catalog spans theology, political and cultural commentary, fiction, and a substantial education list that includes logic textbooks by Wilson, literature anthologies, and the Logic School Books series.

Matt Whitling, the author of Grammar of Poetry, is principal of Logos School in Moscow, one of the original institutions of the classical Christian school movement and a frequent subject of Canon Press education materials. Grammar of Poetry grew out of Whitling's classroom teaching at Logos, and the book's voice is the voice of a practitioner working with real middle-school students rather than the voice of a publishing committee.

Editorially, Canon Press is Reformed, Presbyterian, and classical in the specific sense that the Moscow network uses, a trivium-structured approach in which grammar (fact acquisition), dialectic (logical formation), and rhetoric (persuasive expression) map onto successive educational stages. Families comfortable with this tradition recognize the Canon Press imprint as a trusted one; families from other Christian traditions often use individual Canon Press titles (Grammar of Poetry notably among them) while sourcing other subjects from publishers outside the Moscow orbit. The content of Grammar of Poetry itself is content-neutral enough that non-Reformed classical families, Catholic classical families, and secular classical families all use it freely.

The core pedagogy

Grammar of Poetry teaches English poetry through three concentric circles: scansion (the formal analysis of meter, rhyme, and stanza), tropes (the named figures of speech, metaphor, synecdoche, alliteration, and the rest), and imitation (the writing of new poems in the same form as the model poems under study). The book has thirty lessons; each introduces one or two concepts, provides poems for analysis, works through a sample scansion or identification, and assigns the student to compose an original piece using the technique just learned. A student working through Grammar of Poetry in a single semester writes roughly thirty original poems across the course, each calibrated to the form taught in its respective lesson.

Three signature mechanics define the program. First, imitation as composition: the book does not assign "write a poem about autumn." It assigns "write a Shakespearean sonnet of your own about whatever subject you choose," having just walked the student through the rhyme scheme, the iambic pentameter, and the volta structure. This is the classical model of rhetorical education restored to a modern middle-school textbook, and it works. Second, the trope catalog: the book teaches named figures of speech, synecdoche, metonymy, chiasmus, zeugma, and requires students to identify and then use them. A student finishing Grammar of Poetry has a working vocabulary of rhetorical terms that most college English majors acquire unsystematically, if at all. Third, the poem selection: the book draws on more than 150 poems, ranging from Shakespeare sonnets through Hopkins's sprung rhythm to limericks and tongue twisters. The breadth is genuine, a student reads actual poetry rather than textbook prose about poetry.

The DVD course, distributed through Roman Roads Media, features Whitling himself teaching the thirty lessons to the camera, which substantially lowers the parent-expertise bar. A parent who does not confidently scan iambic pentameter can hand the video to the student and function as a discussion partner afterward rather than as the primary instructor.

A day in the life

A seventh-grader working Grammar of Poetry as a one-semester elective sits down three or four days a week for thirty-five to fifty minutes. On a typical day the student reads the lesson (5-8 minutes of exposition), works through the scansion exercises or trope identifications in the student workbook (10-15 minutes, marking syllables and stress with pencil), and begins the composition assignment, often a short poem in the day's featured form. The composition takes additional time and often spills over into a separate writing block. Parent involvement is roughly 10-15 minutes per lesson, either to walk through a difficult scansion, to read the student's composition aloud for ear-testing, or to work through a trope the student did not quite grasp. On DVD days, the parent role shrinks further, Whitling does the teaching, the parent discusses.

A family running the program across a full academic year rather than a semester slows the pace to two lessons per week, allowing more composition practice and more time for the student to polish the imitation poems. Co-ops often run Grammar of Poetry as a semester elective meeting once weekly, with students completing lessons between sessions and sharing compositions in the group meeting.

What they do exceptionally well

Real classical method. Most curricula that invoke the trivium use the language without recovering the practice. Grammar of Poetry actually does what classical-rhetorical education did, teaches forms by analysis, then demands imitation. A student finishing the book has written sonnets, couplets, limericks, quatrains, and a ballad, and has identified tropes in poems by Shakespeare, Milton, Hopkins, and Dickinson. This is not vocabulary-level classical; it is the thing itself.

The composition output. Students emerge from Grammar of Poetry with thirty original poems, each of which carries a specific formal constraint. The portfolio is a concrete artifact of the year's work, and families often keep them, the student's Shakespearean sonnet from seventh grade is a real object, not an essay that disappeared into a file folder. This makes the course unusually memorable.

The DVD instruction. Matt Whitling's video teaching is steady, dry, and unpretentious. He does not play to the camera; he teaches the material. For parents whose own English education did not cover scansion or the named tropes, the DVDs provide a reliable supplement that does not require the parent to fake expertise.

What they do poorly

Not a stand-alone English program. Grammar of Poetry is a poetry elective, not a complete language-arts year. It teaches no grammar of the parts-of-speech variety, no reading comprehension, no expository or persuasive essay writing, no vocabulary. A family treating it as the year's English program will leave gaps. Pair it with a composition course. Canon Press's own Writing and Rhetoric series, or Institute for Excellence in Writing, for a complete language arts.

Reformed classical framing around the edges. While the poem selections and exercises are largely content-neutral, the Canon Press imprint signals a specific tradition, and occasional example poems or framing sentences reflect the Moscow network's editorial position. Catholic classical families, Charlotte Mason families, and secular classical families all use the book without much friction, but a family alert to publisher signaling will want to know the book comes from a Reformed classical-Christian house.

Visual design is restrained to a fault. The student text is black-and-white, typographic, and plain. There are no illustrations, no color accents, no sidebars. Students who thrive on visual variety find the page layouts austere. This is a choice consistent with classical-press aesthetics but is occasionally a barrier for reluctant readers.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Grammar of Poetry if: you want a real classical poetry elective for middle school or early high school; you believe students should write in specific verse forms rather than in open free verse; you are comfortable with a Reformed classical-Christian imprint; you want the DVD option to lower the parent-teaching bar; you need a short, focused program that produces concrete composition portfolios; you're supplementing a broader classical language-arts sequence.

• Skip Grammar of Poetry if: you want a complete language-arts curriculum in one book; you prefer free-verse, expressive writing over formal imitation; you are uncomfortable with Canon Press's editorial positioning and do not want to source from the Moscow network; your student needs a visually rich textbook; you want a secular classical poetry text without any Christian imprint context.

Cost honest assessment

The student text lists at $23.99 at Canon Press as of April 2026, with the Teacher's Edition at $25.99 and the DVD course at $85.00. The complete package, student text, teacher's edition, and six hours of DVD instruction from Whitling, lists at $134.98, which the publisher positions as roughly 20% off the component total. Individual component purchase is straightforward; a family pairing the student text with the teacher's edition and skipping the DVDs pays $49.98.

Compared at the same subject tier: Poetry Primer, Canon Press's younger-student option, covers similar territory for elementary grades at a similar price. Institute for Excellence in Writing's Poetry Memorization is a memorization program rather than a composition one; Writing and Rhetoric: Fable from Classical Academic Press is a comparable classical composition sequence at roughly $25-$40 per level without DVDs. Grammar of Poetry is competitively priced against direct peers.

A realistic family budget: $50-$135 one-time per family, reusable across siblings since the student work product is composition rather than workbook consumption.

ESA eligibility notes

Grammar of Poetry is ESA-eligible through state marketplaces where Canon Press titles are listed or where the retailer (typically Christianbook, Rainbow Resource, or Amazon) is an approved vendor. Because the program is explicitly published by a Christian press with Reformed theological identity, families in states with religious-exclusion restrictions should verify eligibility within their specific marketplace before ordering. The Canon Press imprint is included on several ESA catalogs but not uniformly across states.

Alternatives

• Writing and Rhetoric (Classical Academic Press), a family would choose Writing and Rhetoric over Grammar of Poetry because it is a full progymnasmata sequence that scales across elementary and middle school rather than a single-semester poetry elective.
• Institute for Excellence in Writing, a family would choose IEW over Grammar of Poetry because IEW covers a much broader composition footprint across prose genres, not just poetry.
• Poetry Primer (Canon Press), a family would choose Poetry Primer over Grammar of Poetry for younger students in grades 3-5, as a gentler introduction to the same formal-analysis tradition before tackling Whitling's thirty lessons.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the publisher's product page at canonpress.com, the individual student text and teacher's edition listings, and sample lessons from the DVD course distributed through Roman Roads Media. We cross-referenced pricing against Christianbook and Amazon, and we reviewed the author's biography at Logos School. Prices and program details verified April 2026.