Which sentence contains an infinitive or infinitive phrase?
a. no, the car had stalled once last month.
b. have you read a bedtime story to the baby?
c. the poem was fun to write despite my initial lack of ideas.
d. floating in the stream was a maple leaf

reading poetry is challenging when you don't have or very little of social context and culture schema.

solution: read the introduction, the norm, or even explaination if you still dont get it.

sentences vary by structure as well as by function. there are compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.

simple sentence

i like to read.

a simple sentence has one independent clause.

compound sentence

i like to read, and i also like to write.

a compound sentence includes more than one independent clause, connected by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, nor, or, so, or yet).

complex sentence

i prefer to read books that are bestsellers.

a complex sentence includes one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. (a dependent clause is one that cannot stand alone.) types of dependent clauses include relative clauses (i kicked the boy who pinched me), adverb clauses (i am going home now because i have a curfew), and noun clauses (i don't know what to do next).

compound-complex sentence

although i prefer to read current bestsellers, i do like to read old agatha christie mysteries, and i also like some 20th-century science fiction.

compound-complex sentences take a bunch of clauses (multiple independent clauses, and one or more dependent clauses) and toss them together like a salad. although these sentences take practice to write in a grammatically correct fashion, they can hold a tremendous amount of meaning, and are common in academic writing.