Poetry

From Wikinfo

Poems are literary works meant to be read or spoken, usually relying strongly on word choice, sounds, and imagery to create a mood in the audience's mind or ear which may be romantic, ominous, wistful, sensual, inspiring, or daring. Poetry, the art of creating poems, also known as verse, may be defined in opposition to prose, which is language which is meant to convey meaning, with lesser emphasis on mood, word choice, and exact form of expression. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more loosely defined as a fundamental creative act using language.

Contents 1 How poets create 1.1 Features like rhythm, metre and sound 1.2 Features like resonance and meaning 1.3 Composition, structure and style 2 Cultural forms of poetry 3 Quotations about poetry 4 The vocabulary of poetry 5 The History of Poetry 6 Basic elements of Poetry 7 Poetic form 8 American poetry 9 Terms 9.1 Style 9.2 Structure 9.3 Artistical means 9.4 Measures of verse 9.5 National poetries 9.6 Sub-culture poetries 9.7 Other 10 See Also 10.1 References

How poets create

Poetry writing is a creative act, poets may carefully follow conventions or simply, put together what sounds right.

Features like rhythm, metre and sound

Poetry often uses particular forms and conventions to expand the literal meaning of the words, or to invoke emotional or sensual responses. It also tends to place emphasis on the rhythm of the words, frequently arranging them into lines of a particular metre to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The exact sounds of the words also tends to be important, with devices such as alliteration and assonance common. Poetry often rhymes, though it is by no means required to do so.

Features like resonance and meaning

Poetry's use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leave a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, metaphor and simile create a resonance between otherwise disparate images a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.

Composition, structure and style

Because the structure and exact wording of poetry is normally more important than it is in prose, poets are more likely compose their work with care over a period of time. However, poetry can be composed spontaneously (see improvisation and surrealist automatism) just as prose can, and it is possible to spend just as much time on writing prose as writing poetry. The difference, when it comes down to it, is in structure and style. The devices used tend to vary between languages, times and places, as well as between individual poets. The visual presentation of poetry can also be important.

Cultural forms of poetry

Some forms of poetry are specific to particular cultures and genres, responding to the characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. While readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Shakespeare, Dante and Goethe may think of poetry as being written in rhyming lines and regular meter, there are other traditions, such as those of Du Fu and Beowulf, which use other approaches to achieve rhythm and euphony. In today's globalized world, poets often borrow styles, techniques and forms from different cultures and languages.

Quotations about poetry

Poetry is, to paraphrase Justice Harlan on pornography, not easy to define but you'll know it when you see it.

Shelley called poetry "the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." Despite this many poems are sad.

William Wordsworth called this "impassioned expression" ". . .the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge."

Due to its nature, poetry is generally much more difficult to translate than prose. Indeed Robert Frost famously defined poetry to be "what gets lost in translation".

The vocabulary of poetry

The vocabulary of poetry tends to be larger and more obscure than that of prose, because poets are apt to take greater liberties with the language and to retain old words and invent new words in order to express themselves within the structure of their poetry. These facts mean that understanding foreign language poetry can be especially difficult. On the other hand, poetry can often be enjoyed for its sound without necessarily understanding its exact meaning, which is usually open to interpretation anyway.

The History of Poetry

Poetry is as old as human speech and is a compressed form of speech (and song) in an imaginative manner that at its best evokes and releases human emotions and intuition.

See Also:The History of Poetry

Basic elements of Poetry

The basic elements of poetry can be seen as, Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm, and intonation.

Poetic form

Historically, very specific and formalized poetic forms have been developed by many cultures. In more developed, closed or "received" forms, rhyming scheme, meter and other elements of a poem are based on sets of rules, ranging from the relatively loose rules that govern the construction of an elegy to the highly formalized structure of the ghazal or villanelle. Below are described some common forms of poetry widely used across several languages. Additional forms of poetry can be found in the discussions of poetry of particular cultures or periods or in the glossary.

American poetry

For further information, try The Columbia History of American Poetry.

Terms

Style

Automatic poetry Ballad Concrete poetry Elegy Epic Epigram Epitaph

Erasure poetry Fable Found poetry Grook Light Poetry Lyric Modernist

Nonsense verse Ode Pastoral Post-modernist Renga Rondeau

Senryu Song SymmyS Tanka Villanelle

Structure

• Cinquain
• Clerihew
• Free verse
• Haiku
• Limerick
• Pantoum
• Quatrain
• Quatorzain
• Sestina
• Sonnet

Artistical means

Accent Aleatory methods Alliteration Aposiopesis Assonance Couplet Ellipsis

Enjambment Foot Kennings Metaphor Onomatopoeia Rhyme Rhythm Simile

Measures of verse

Types of metre	Types of line
Amphibrach Anapaest Choreus Dactyl Dibrach Iamb Pyrrhic Spondee Tribrach Trochee	Monometer Dimeter/couplet Trimeter Tetrameter Pentameter Hexameter/Alexandrine Heptameter Octameter

National poetries

• Arabic Poetry
• Old English poetry
• Sagas
• Serbian epic poetry

Sub-culture poetries

• Cowboy poetry

Other

• How to read a poem
• Performance poetry
• List of poets
• Slam Poetry
• Spoken word

See Also

• Poets corner, a place where you can post your original poems
• Glossary of poetry terms
• literature
• short story
• theater
• novel

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Poetry" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry July 17, 2003