Thinking syntax

I quite like Emily Khilfeh’s “Ekphrasis On ‘The New York Times’ Headline ‘Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom’,” which I find especially moving and especially well crafted. The Palestinian topic was outside my experience yet accessible to me. Oh, here’s a related and interesting interview she did.

It all led me to this, at the American Academy of Poets:

“Syntax differs from diction because the poetic device encompasses the unique placement of words together and grammatical conventions employed by the poet, not the word choice.

“The ways in which poets select words to be grammatically arranged together and how these words sound together serve as the poet’s fingerprint… Syntax also produces the poem’s rhythm through the repetition of words and sounds of words.”

It seems to me that syntax and prosody overlap a good deal, though neither seems quite to encompass the other.