Poetry

Poetry is a special kind of writing that uses beautiful and rhythmic words to share feelings and ideas. It makes us think in new ways by using sounds, patterns, and clever comparisons. Poems are written by people called poets, and each poem is a small piece of art.

Poets use many tricks to make their words sound nice and mean many things at once. They might repeat certain sounds, use rhymes, or arrange their words in special patterns. These tricks help the poem feel musical and full of deeper meanings.

Poetry has been around for a very long time, from ancient times in Africa to today. Some of the oldest poems are from places like Sumer and China, and they talk about many things like nature, love, and big adventures. Poets all over the world have kept creating new kinds of poetry, mixing old traditions with new ideas.

History

Main articles: History of poetry and Literary theory

Early works

Some people think poetry started before we learned how to write. It may have begun with stories told out loud. The oldest poem we still have is the Epic of Gilgamesh. It comes from around 3000 BCE in Sumer (in Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq). It was written on clay tablets using a special way of writing called cuneiform.

Other old poems include the Greek Iliad and Odyssey, the Persian Avestan books, and the Indian stories Ramayana and Mahabharata. Poems were often made to help people remember stories.

Western traditions

In the past, people in Europe thought about different kinds of poetry. They talked about big stories (epics), funny or sad plays (tragedies), and shorter poems that share feelings (lyric poetry). These ideas came from a Greek thinker named Aristotle.

Later, during a time called the Renaissance, people kept using these ideas. They thought poetry was different from regular writing because it didn't just tell a story in a straight line.

20th-century and 21st-century disputes

In the 1900s, some writers started to ignore old rules about how poems should look. They tried new ways to write poems. Today, poets mix ideas from many places and times.

In the 2020s, computers learned to make poems too. Some people think these computer poems sound very nice and easy to read.

Elements

Prosody

Main article: Meter (poetry)

Prosody is the study of rhythm and patterns in poetry. Rhythm and meter are related but different. Meter is the pattern set for a verse, like iambic pentameter, while rhythm is the actual sound from a line of poetry. Prosody can also look at how lines are scanned to show meter.

Rhythm

Main articles: Timing (linguistics), tone (linguistics), and Pitch accent

How rhythm is made in poetry changes between languages and traditions. Languages are often described by how they set timing, like by accents, syllables, or moras. Japanese is a mora-timed language. Latin, Catalan, French, Leonese, Galician and Spanish are syllable-timed languages. Stress-timed languages include English, Russian and German. Intonation also affects rhythm. Languages can use pitch or tone. Some languages with pitch accents include Vedic Sanskrit or Ancient Greek. Tonal languages include Chinese, Vietnamese and many Subsaharan languages.

Metrical rhythm usually arranges stresses or syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. In Modern English, the pattern of stresses mainly defines feet, so rhythm based on meter often uses stressed and unstressed syllables. In classical languages, vowel length defines meter instead of stresses. Old English poetry used a pattern with varied syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line.

The main device in ancient Hebrew Biblical poetry, including many psalms, was parallelism. This is when lines reflect each other in structure, sound, or meaning. Parallelism worked well for antiphonal or call-and-response performances, supported by intonation. Biblical poetry often creates rhythm with larger sound units like lines and phrases instead of metrical feet. Some classical forms, like the Venpa in Tamil, had strict grammars ensuring rhythm.

Classical Chinese poetics, based on Middle Chinese tone systems, recognized level and oblique tones. Certain poetry forms had rules about which syllables must be level or oblique.

Modern English poetry often uses free verse, where rhythm is organized by looser cadence rather than regular meter. Poets like Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams rejected strict accentual meter. Jeffers tried sprung rhythm as an alternative.

Meter

Main article: Scansion

In Western poetry, meters are usually grouped by metrical foot and the number of feet per line. The number of feet is described with Greek terms: tetrameter for four feet, hexameter for six feet, and so on. For example, iambic pentameter has five iamb feet per line. This system started in ancient Greek poetry and was used by poets like Pindar and Sappho, and the tragedians of Athens. Dactylic hexameter, with six dactyl feet per line, was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, used by Homer and Hesiod. Iambic pentameter and dactylic hexameter were later used by poets like William Shakespeare and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Common metrical feet in English include:

• iamb – one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable
• trochee – one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable
• dactyl – one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables
• anapaest – two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable
• spondee – two stressed syllables together
• pyrrhic – two unstressed syllables together

There are many other types of feet, up to the choriamb, a four-syllable foot with a stressed syllable, two unstressed, and another stressed syllable. Languages using vowel length or intonation, like Ottoman Turkish or Vedic, have similar concepts to iamb and dactyl.

Each type of foot has its own feel, alone or with others. The iamb is natural in English and creates a subtle, stable verse. Scanning meter shows the basic pattern but not varying stresses, pitches, or syllable lengths.

There is debate about how useful many different feet are in describing meter. Robert Pinsky argued that while dactyls matter in classical verse, English dactylic verse uses them irregularly and can be better described with iambs and anapests. Actual rhythm is more complex than basic scanned meter, and scholars have tried to develop systems to scan this complexity. Vladimir Nabokov noted a separate pattern of accents from the natural pitch of spoken words, suggesting the term "scud" for unaccented stress.

Sanskrit poetry is organized by chhandas, which continue to influence South Asian languages' poetry.

Metrical patterns

Main article: Meter (poetry)

Different poetry traditions and genres use different meters, from Shakespearean iambic pentameter to Homeric dactylic hexameter and the anapestic tetrameter in nursery rhymes. Variations to established meters are common to add emphasis or avoid repetition. For example, stress in a foot may be inverted, a pause (caesura) may be added, or the final foot may have a feminine ending or be replaced by a spondee. Regularity varies between languages. Patterns often develop distinctively in different languages, so iambic tetrameter in Russian shows more regularity in accents than in English.

Common metrical patterns include:

• Iambic pentameter (John Milton, Paradise Lost; William Shakespeare, Sonnets)
• Dactylic hexameter (Homer, Iliad; Virgil, Aeneid)
• Iambic tetrameter (Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress; Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin; Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)
• Trochaic octameter (Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven)
• Trochaic tetrameter (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha; The Kalevala, the Finnish national epic)

Rhyme, alliteration, assonance

Main articles: Rhyme, Alliterative verse, and Assonance

Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance create repetitive sound patterns. They can be used as a structural element, to reinforce rhythm, or for decoration. They can also carry meaning beyond sound. For example, Chaucer used heavy alliteration to mock Old English verse.

Rhyme has identical or similar sounds at the ends of lines or within lines (internal rhyme). Languages differ in rhyme richness; Italian has a rich structure, while English is less rich due to irregular endings. The richness of a language’s rhymes affects common poetic forms.

Alliteration repeats letters or sounds at the start of words close together. Alliteration and assonance were key in early Germanic, Norse, and Old English poetry, weaving meter and alliteration. In modern European poetry, alliteration is often used as decoration rather than structure.

Assonance uses similar vowel sounds within words, used in skaldic poetry and Homeric epics. Because verbs carry pitch in English, assonance can evoke tones of Chinese poetry, useful in translation. Consonance repeats consonant sounds without putting them at word starts, creating subtler effects than alliteration.

Rhyming schemes

Main article: Rhyme scheme

In many languages, poets use rhyme in set patterns for forms like ballads, sonnets, and rhyming couplets. However, not all modern poetry uses traditional rhyme schemes. Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme. Rhyme entered European poetry in the High Middle Ages, influenced by Arabic language poets in Al Andalus. Arabic poets used rhyme extensively from the sixth century onward.

Rhyme schemes are described with letters. For example, if the first, second, and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme and the third does not, it is an AA BA scheme. An A BB A quatrain (enclosed rhyme) is used in Petrarchan sonnets. Complicated schemes have their own names, like ottava rima and terza rima. The main article discusses types and uses of rhyming schemes.

Form in poetry

Poetic form is more flexible in modernist and post-modernist poetry and less structured than earlier eras. Many modern poets avoid recognizable structures and write in free verse. Free verse is not formless but has subtle, flexible prosodic elements. All poetry, regardless of style, has some regard for basic formal structures.

Major structural elements in poetry include the line, the stanza or verse paragraph, and larger combinations like cantos. Visual presentation of words and calligraphy are also used. These units combine into larger poetic forms, like the sonnet.

Lines and stanzas

Main articles: Line (poetry) and Stanza

Poetry is often separated into lines on a page, a process called lineation. Lines may follow metrical feet or rhyme patterns. Lines can also separate, compare, or contrast ideas or highlight tone changes. See the article on line breaks for division between lines.

Lines are often organized into stanzas, groups of lines. A couplet has two lines, a triplet or tercet has three, and a quatrain has four. These lines may or may not relate by rhyme or rhythm. For example, a couplet may have identical meters and rhymes or just a common meter.

Some poems use verse paragraphs, where regular rhymes and rhythms aren’t used, but poetic tone is set by rhythms, alliterations, and rhymes in paragraph form. Many medieval poems were written this way.

In many forms, stanzas interlock, meaning the rhyme scheme or structure of one stanza determines the next. Examples include the ghazal and the villanelle, which use refrains. Stanzas can also separate thematic parts of a poem. In ode forms, the strophe, antistrophe, and epode are often in separate stanzas.

In longer epic poetry, stanzas follow strict rules and combine. In skaldic poetry, the dróttkvætt stanza has eight lines with three "lifts" using alliteration or assonance. Odd lines have partial rhyme of consonants with different vowels, and even lines have internal rhyme. Each half-line has six syllables, and each line ends in a trochee. Dróttkvætts follow less rigid rules than individual stanzas.

Visual presentation

Main article: Visual poetry

Even before printing, the visual appearance of poetry added meaning. Acrostic poems use initial letters to convey meaning. In Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese poetry, finely calligraphed poems are important.

With printing, poets gained more control over visual presentation. Visual elements became a tool, used by Modernist poets to complement rhythm with visual caesuras, create juxtapositions, accentuate meaning, or simply create beauty. This can lead to concrete poetry or asemic writing.

Diction

Main article: Poetic diction

Poetic diction is how language is used, considering sound, meaning, and interaction with form. Many languages and forms have specific poetic dictions, sometimes with distinct grammars or dialects. Registers in poetry range from ordinary speech to highly ornate language.

Poetic diction can include rhetorical devices like simile and metaphor, and tones like irony. Aristotle said mastery of metaphor is key. Since Modernism, some poets have used diction that avoids rhetorical devices, focusing on direct presentation. Surrealists pushed rhetorical devices to limits, using catachresis.

Allegorical stories are important in many cultures, prominent in classical times, the late Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Aesop's Fables are a rich source of allegorical poetry. Other examples include Roman de la Rose, William Langland’s Piers Ploughman, and Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables. Poems may also contain symbols or allusions to deepen meaning.

Another element is vivid imagery. Juxtaposing unexpected images is strong in surrealist poetry and haiku. Vivid images often have symbolism or metaphor. Poetic dictions use repetitive phrases, like Homer’s "rosy-fingered dawn" or "the wine-dark sea," or longer refrains, for effect. Repetition can add somber tone or irony as context changes.

Forms

See also: Category: Poetic forms

Many cultures have created special ways of writing poetry. These forms have rules about rhymes, rhythms, and structure. Some forms are very strict, while others are more flexible.

Sonnet

Main article: Sonnet

The sonnet is a popular type of poem with fourteen lines. It follows certain rules for rhymes and structure. One special feature of sonnets is the “turn,” where the poem’s idea changes or becomes more complex.

Sonnets often talk about deep feelings and love. Poets have used this form to write about many topics, including history, war, and personal thoughts.

Shi

Main article: Shi (poetry)

Shi is a major type of poetry from China. It has different styles, but all require rhyming. Some styles have four lines, while others have eight. The lines often have five or seven characters each.

Villanelle

Main article: Villanelle

The villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with five groups of three lines and one group of four lines. It uses two repeated lines throughout the poem.

Limerick

Main article: Limerick (poetry)

A limerick is a funny five-line poem. The rhythm is important, and the lines follow a specific pattern of rhyming.

Tanka

Main article: Tanka

Tanka is a form of Japanese poetry with five lines totaling thirty-one sounds. It often shifts in tone or subject between the first three lines and the last two.

Haiku

Main article: Haiku

Haiku is a short form of Japanese poetry with three lines totaling seventeen sounds. It often includes a word that connects to a season.

Khlong

Main article: Thai poetry

The khlong is an old form of Thai poetry with special rules about syllables and tones. It is considered an advanced and elegant style.

Ode

Main article: Ode

Odes are serious poems that look at a subject from different angles. They often have three parts: a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode.

Ghazal

Main article: Ghazal

The ghazal is a form of poetry from Arabic, Bengali, Persian, and Urdu cultures. It usually has several rhyming couplets that share a repeated line at the end. Ghazals often explore themes of deep emotion or spiritual ideas.

Genres

In addition to specific forms of poems, poetry is often thought of in terms of different genres and subgenres. A poetic genre is generally a tradition or classification of poetry based on the subject matter, style, or other broader literary characteristics.

Narrative poetry

Main article: Narrative poetry

Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that tells a story. It may be the oldest type of poetry. Many scholars have concluded that famous ancient poems were composed of compilations of shorter narrative poems.

Lyric poetry

Main article: Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre that does not attempt to tell a story but is of a more personal nature. Poems in this genre tend to be shorter and melodic, and contemplative.

Epic poetry

Main article: Epic poetry

Epic poetry is a genre of poetry that is often defined as lengthy poems concerning events of a heroic or important nature to the culture of the time.

Satirical poetry

Poetry can be a powerful vehicle for satire.

Elegy

Main article: Elegy

An elegy is a mournful, melancholy or plaintive poem, especially a lament for the dead or a funeral song.

Verse fable

Main article: Fable

The fable is an ancient literary genre, often set in verse. It is a succinct story that features anthropomorphised animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that illustrate a moral lesson.

Dramatic poetry

Main articles: Verse drama and dramatic verse, Theatre of ancient Greece, Sanskrit drama, Chinese Opera, and Noh

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

Speculative poetry

Main article: Speculative poetry

Speculative poetry, also known as fantastic poetry, is a poetic genre which deals thematically with subjects which are "beyond reality".

Prose poetry

Main article: Prose poetry

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

Light poetry

Main article: Light poetry

Light poetry, or light verse, is poetry that attempts to be humorous. Poems considered "light" are usually brief, and can be on a frivolous or serious subject.

Slam poetry

Slam poetry as a genre originated in 1986 in Chicago, Illinois, when Marc Kelly Smith organized the first slam.

Performance poetry

Main article: Performance poetry

Performance poetry, similar to slam in that it occurs before an audience, is a genre of poetry that may fuse a variety of disciplines in a performance of a text, such as dance, music, and other aspects of performance art.

Language happenings

The term happening was popularized by the avant-garde movements in the 1950s and regard spontaneous, site-specific performances. Language happenings are events which focus less on poetry as a prescriptive literary genre, but more as a descriptive linguistic act and performance, often incorporating broader forms of performance art while poetry is read or created in that moment.