Poetry

=**What is poetry?**= = =

**Definition**: poetries, plural
 * Literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature
 * - he is chiefly famous for his love //poetry//
 * A quality of beauty and intensity of emotion regarded as characteristic of poems
 * - //poetry// and fire are nicely balanced in the music
 * Something regarded as comparable to //poetry//in its beauty
 * - the music department is housed in a building that is pure //poetry//
 * Definition:** Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response. Poetry has been known to employ meter and rhyme, but this is by no means necessary. Poetry is an ancient form that has gone through numerous and drastic reinvention over time. The very nature of poetry as an authentic and individual mode of expression makes it nearly impossible to define.
 * Definition:** Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response. Poetry has been known to employ meter and rhyme, but this is by no means necessary. Poetry is an ancient form that has gone through numerous and drastic reinvention over time. The very nature of poetry as an authentic and individual mode of expression makes it nearly impossible to define.

=** Some Poetry Forms **= Detailed below are explanations of Poetry Forms. There are many poetry forms such as ballads, sonnets, odes, epitaphs, elegies and many more. What do they all mean and what are the differences in these various forms? Listed below are many definitions of Poetry Forms. A Form is the generic term for the organising principle of a literary work. In poetry, form is described in terms elements like rhyme, meter, and stanzaic pattern. **ABC poem** An ABC poem has 5 lines that create a mood, picture, or feeling. Lines 1 through 4 are made up of words, phrases or clauses - and the first word of each line is in alphabetical order from the first word. Line 5 is one sentence, beginning with any letter. > A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain. > //Poetry Forms// A type of poem, usually with three stanzas of seven, eight, or ten lines and a shorter final stanza of four or five lines. All stanzas end with the same one-line refrain. Poetry that is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse is often unobtrusive and the iambic pentameter form often resembles the rhythms of ordinary speech. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in blank verse. A medieval Italian lyric poem, with five or six stanzas and a shorter concluding stanza (or envoy). The poet Patriarch was a master of the canzone. > A Latin expression that means "seize the day." Carpe diem poems have the theme of living for today. > A cinquain has five lines. > Line 1 is one word (the title) > Line 2 is two words that describe the title. > Line 3 is three words that tell the action > Line 4 is four words that express the feeling > Line 5 is one word that recalls the title > A couplet has rhyming stanzas each made up of two lines. Shakespearean sonnets usually end in a couplet. A sad and thoughtful poem lamenting the death of a person. An example of this type of poem is Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." A long, serious poem that tells the story of a heroic figure. Two of the most famous epic poems are the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer and the epic poem of Hiawatha. A very short, satirical and witty poem usually written as a brief couplet or quatrain. The term epigram is derived from the Greek word epigramma, meaning inscription. The epigram was cultivated in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by poets like Ben Jonson and John Donne > An epitaph is a commemorative inscription on a tomb or mortuary monument written in praise of a deceased person. > A wedding poem written in honour of a bride and bridegroom. > Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern or expectation. A Japanese poem composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Haiku reflects on some aspect of nature. Either a short poem depicting a peaceful, idealized country scene, or a long poem that tells a story about heroes of a bye gone age. > A lay is a long narrative poem, especially one that was sung by medieval minstrels called trouvères. A short sometimes bawdy, humorous poem of consisting of five anapaestic lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5 of a Limerick have seven to ten syllables and rhyme with one another. Lines 3 and 4 have five to seven syllables and also rhyme with each other. Need to find out more about [|Limericks] ? A poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. The term lyric is now generally referred to as the words to a song. > A name poem tells about the word. It uses the letters of the word for the first letter of each line. > Ballads, epics, and lays are different kinds of narrative poems. John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is probably the most famous example of this type of poem which is long and serious in nature written to a set structure. > A poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, idealized way for example of shepherds or country life. > A stanza or poem of four lines. > Lines 2 and 4 must rhyme. > Lines 1 and 3 may or may not rhyme. > Rhyming lines should have a similar number of syllables.. Nature and love were a major themes of Romanticism favoured by 18th and 19th century poets such as Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Emphasis was placed on the personal experiences of the individual. > A Japanese poem of five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the rest of seven. English (or Shakespearean) sonnets are lyric poems that are 14 lines long falling into three coordinate quatrains and a concluding couplet. Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnets are divided into two quatrains and a six-line sestet. > A single metrical line of poetry, or poetry in general (as opposed to prose)
 * ** Ballad **
 * ** Ballade **
 * ** Blank verse **
 * ** Canzone **
 * ** Carpe diem **
 * ** Cinquain **
 * ** Couplet **
 * ** Elegy **
 * ** Epic **
 * ** Epigram **
 * ** Epitaph **
 * ** Epithalamium (or Epithalamion) **
 * ** Free verse (also vers libre) **
 * ** Haiku **
 * ** Idyll, or Idyl **
 * ** Lay **
 * ** Limerick **
 * ** Lyric **
 * ** Name Poem **
 * ** Narrative Poetry **
 * ** Ode **
 * ** Pastoral **
 * ** Quatrain **
 * ** Romanticism **
 * ** Tanka **
 * ** Sonnet **
 * ** Verse **

=**Poetic Movements**= [|Poetry throught the ages] Elizabethans Classicists Metaphysicals Romantics War Poets Modernists Surrealists Performance Poets

=Poetry Techniques and Devices =

Glossary of poetic devices [|at Poetry Archive]

SPECSLIMS - a guide to analysing poetry

Useful site for poems and analysis thereof: [|Cummings study guides] Handout for making notes on a poet and their poems