Facts about Poetry

Poetry's use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations.

Lyric poetry, which tends to be shorter, melodic, and contemplative, is another commonly identified genre.

Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that tells a story.

Additional forms of poetry may be found in the discussions of poetry of particular cultures or periods and in the glossary.

Most critics argue that it qualifies as poetry because of its conciseness, use of metaphor, and special attention to language.

Rhyme entered European poetry in the High Middle Ages, in part under the influence of the Arabic language in Al Andalus (modern Spain).

The juxtaposition of unexpected or impossible images is, for example, a particularly strong element in surrealist poetry and haiku.

A poetic genre is generally a tradition or classification of poetry based on the subject matter, style, or other broader literary characteristics.

Some forms of poetry carry a consistent and well-defined rhyming scheme, such as the chant royal or the rubaiyat, while other poetic forms have variable rhyme schemes.

Some twentieth century literary theorists, relying less on the opposition of prose and poetry, focused on the poet as simply one who creates using language, and poetry as what the poet creates.

The choriamb is derived from some ancient Greek and Latin poetry.

Poetry is often separated into lines on a page.

The formal patterns of meter used developed in Modern English verse to create rhythm no longer dominate contemporary English poetry.

The tradition of lyric poetry based on spiritual experience was continued by later poets such as John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins and T.S.

Dramatic poetry is drama written in verse to be spoken or sung, and appears in varying and sometimes related forms in many cultures.

Tanka were written as early as the Nara period by such poets as Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, at a time when Japan was emerging from a period where much of its poetry followed Chinese form.

Prose poetry is a hybrid genre that demonstrates attributes of both prose and poetry.

Epic poetry is a genre of poetry, and a major form of narrative literature.

Much narrative poetry—such as Scots and English ballads, and Baltic and Slavic heroic poems—is performance poetry with roots in a preliterate oral tradition.

The Tanka is a form of Japanese poetry, generally not possessing rhyme, with five lines structured in a 5-7-5 7-7 patterns.

Some forms of poetry are specific to particular cultures and genres, responding to the characteristics of the language in which the poet writes.

Later aestheticians identified three major genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry.

Some classical poetry forms, such as Venpa of the Tamil language, had rigid grammars (to the point that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar) which ensured a rhythm.

Later poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry from, and defined it in opposition to, prose, which was generally understood as writing with a proclivity to logical explication and a linear narrative structure.

Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry.

Tanka was originally the shorter form of Japanese formal poetry, and was used more heavily to explore personal rather than public themes.

Poetry often uses particular forms and conventions to expand the literal meaning of the words, or to evoke emotional or sensual responses.

The alliterative patterns of early Germanic poetry interweave meter and alliteration as a key part of their structure, so that the metrical pattern determines when the listener expects instances of alliteration to occur.

Old Kingdom of Egypt, belief in the eternal afterlife of the human Ka (Egyptian soul) is documented.

Meter is the definitive pattern established for a verse (such as iambic pentameter), while rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line of poetry.

Poetry can be a powerful vehicle for satire.

Epic poetry is one commonly identified genre, often defined as lengthy poems focused on an action-based narrative.

Another exemplar of English satirical poetry was Alexander Pope, who chided critics in his Essay on Criticism (1709).

Similarly, in the best poetry written in the classical style there will be departures from strict form for emphasis or effect.

Dryden and Pope were writers of epic poetry, and their satirical style was accordingly epic; but there is no prescribed form for satirical poetry.

The pantoum is a rare form of poetry similar to a villanelle.

Alliteration and assonance played a key role in structuring early Germanic, Norse and Old English forms of poetry.

Some commentators may organize bodies of poetry into further subgenres, and individual poems may be seen as a part of many different genres.

d?hina, siddha, chatt?) and can also be referred to individually as "tabla."

Poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of meter.

Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns or lyrics.

Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition and rhyme, and emphasised the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from prose.

Poetry appears among the earliest records of most literate cultures, with poetic fragments found on early monoliths, rune stones and stelae.

Poetry as an art form may predate literacy.

Disputes over the definition of poetry, and over poetry's distinction from other genres of literature, have been inextricably intertwined with the debate over the role of poetic form.

The ghazal (Persian/Urdu/Arabic: ???) is a form of poetry common in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Bengali poetry.

More recently, postmodernism has fully embraced MacLeish's concept and come to regard boundaries between prose and poetry, and also among genres of poetry, as having meaning only as cultural artifacts.

Among the major structural elements often used in poetry are the line, the stanza or verse paragraph, and larger combinations of stanzas or lines such as cantos.

Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme.

In Chinese poetry, tones as well as stresses create rhythm.

Early attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy.

Other ancient epic poetry includes the Greek epics, Iliad and Odyssey, and the Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata.

The Polish historian of aesthetics, W?adys?aw Tatarkiewicz, in a paper on "The Concept of Poetry," traces the evolution of what is in fact two concepts of poetry.

Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams are three notable poets who reject the idea that regular accentual meter is critical to English poetry.

By the thirteenth century, Tanka had become the dominant form of Japanese poetry, and it is still widely written today.

From the mid-twentieth century, poetry has sometimes been more loosely defined as a fundamental creative act using language.

The Greeks and Romans had a strong tradition of satirical poetry, often written for political purposes.

Among the most common form of poetry through the ages is the sonnet, which, by the thirteenth century, was a poem of 14 lines following a set rhyme scheme and logical structure.

Poetry, and discussions of it, have a long history.

The efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in "poetics"–the study of the aesthetics of poetry.

Broadly it subsumes epic poetry, but the term "narrative poetry" is often reserved for smaller works, generally with more direct appeal than the epic to human interest.

Different traditions and genres of poetry tend to use different meters, ranging from the Shakespearian iambic pentameter and the Homerian dactylic hexameter to the Anapestic tetrameter used in many nursery rhymes.

In Arabic, Hebrew and Chinese poetry, the visual presentation of finely calligraphed poems has played an important part in the overall effect of many poems.

Tanka was originally the shorter form of Japanese formal poetry, and was used more heavily to explore personal rather than public themes.

Described below are some common forms of poetry widely used across a number of languages.