Here's a classic poet whom I love!
"I Have Loved Hours at Sea"
by Sara Teasdale
I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;
First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.
I have loved much and been loved deeply --
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.
Glad to hear you are gonna trash the rules..;)
Oh, please meet KnittingAConundrum.
The best way to understand word flow is to read poetry written by good poets, and see how they play with sounds and meaning and rhythm.
I recommend:
Alexander Pope (who could amazingly make couplets not sound trite, in part because of internal rhythm and use of both alliteration and assonance)
Robert Browning (just because. And don't miss Love Among the Ruins)
T.S. Elliot. You must read Old Possum's Book of Cats, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Ash Wednesday and the Hollow Men. He doesn't play a lot of rhyme games, but does nicely structured verse. Prufrock might be the best poem written in the pre-1960 20th Century.
Shel Silverstein, because of the way he plays with words. Get out of his children's stuff and read some of the songs he wrote, like the Cover of the Rolling Stone. You can get to them here: http://www.banned-width.com/
JRR Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A great working of alliterative verse.
And Shakespeare. And Yeats. And Allen Ginsberg, especially Kaddish. And Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach.