User:TachyonJack/Prose

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"Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain," by China's Emperor Gaozong

Poetry (from the

poetic drama, hymns or lyrics
.

Poetry, and discussions of it, have a long

speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy.[1] Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from prose.[2] From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more loosely defined as a fundamental creative act using language.[3]

Poetry often uses particular forms and conventions to suggest alternative meanings in the words, or to evoke emotional or sensual responses. Devices such as

meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses
, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.

Some forms of poetry are specific to particular

euphony. Much of modern British and American poetry is to some extent a critique of poetic tradition,[5] playing with and testing (among other things) the principle of euphony itself, to the extent that sometimes it deliberately does not rhyme or keep to set rhythms at all.[6][7][8] In today's globalized
world, poets often borrow styles, techniques and forms from diverse cultures and languages.

History

Main articles: History of poetry and Literary theory
Deluge tablet of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian, circa 2nd millennium BC
.

Poetry as an art form may predate

Gathas (1200-900 BC) to the Odyssey (800–675 BC), appear to have been composed in poetic form to aid memorization and oral transmission, in prehistoric and ancient societies.[10] Poetry appears among the earliest records of most literate cultures, with poetic fragments found on early monoliths, runestones and stelae
.

The oldest surviving poem is the

Gathic Avesta and Yasna, the Roman national epic, Virgil's Aeneid, and the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata
.

The efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in "

love poetry, and rap.[12]

medical texts.[16]

The Polish historian of aesthetics, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, in a paper on "The Concept of Poetry," traces the evolution of what is in fact two concepts of poetry. Tatarkiewicz points out that the term is applied to two distinct things that, as the poet Paul Valéry observes, "at a certain point find union. Poetry [...] is an art based on language. But poetry also has a more general meaning [...] that is difficult to define because it is less determinate: poetry expresses a certain state of mind." [17]

Western traditions

Aristotle
John Keats

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

subgenres
of dramatic poetry.

Aristotle's work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age,[19] as well as in Europe during the Renaissance.[20] 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.[21]

This does not imply that poetry is illogical or lacks narration, but rather that poetry is an attempt to render the beautiful or sublime without the burden of engaging the logical or narrative thought process. English

Negative Capability."[22] This "romantic" approach views form
as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic. This approach remained influential into the twentieth century.

During this period, there was also substantially more interaction among the various poetic traditions, in part due to the spread of European colonialism and the attendant rise in global trade. In addition to a boom in translation, during the Romantic period numerous ancient works were rediscovered.

20th-century disputes

Archibald MacLeish

Some 20th-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 underlying concept of the poet as creator is not uncommon, and some modernist poets essentially do not distinguish between the creation of a poem with words, and creative acts in other media such as carpentry.[23] Yet other modernists challenge the very attempt to define poetry as misguided, as when Archibald MacLeish concludes his paradoxical poem, "Ars Poetica," with the lines: "A poem should not mean / but be."[24]

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 rejection of traditional forms and structures for poetry that began in the first half of the twentieth century coincided with a questioning of the purpose and meaning of traditional definitions of poetry and of distinctions between poetry and prose, particularly given examples of poetic prose and prosaic poetry. Numerous modernist poets have written in non-traditional forms or in what traditionally would have been considered prose, although their writing was generally infused with poetic diction and often with rhythm and tone established by non-metrical means.[25] While there was a substantial formalist reaction within the modernist schools to the breakdown of structure, this reaction focused as much on the development of new formal structures and syntheses as on the revival of older forms and structures.[26]

More recently, postmodernism has fully embraced MacLeish's concept and come to regard the boundaries between prose and poetry, and also among genres of poetry, as having meaning only as cultural artifacts. Postmodernism goes beyond modernism's emphasis on the creative role of the poet, to emphasize the role of the reader of a text (Hermeneutics), and to highlight the complex cultural web within which a poem is read.[27] Today, throughout the world, poetry often incorporates poetic form and diction from other cultures and from the past, further confounding attempts at definition and classification that were once sensible within a tradition such as the Western canon.

Elements of Poetry

Prosody

Main article:
Meter (poetry)

Prosody is the study of the

meter, rhythm, and intonation of a poem. Rhythm and meter, although closely related, should be distinguished.[28] 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. Thus, the meter of a line may be described as being "iambic", but a full description of the rhythm would require noting where the language causes one to pause or accelerate and how the meter interacts with other elements of the language. Prosody also may be used more specifically to refer to the scanning
of poetic lines to show meter.

Rhythm

Main articles:
pitch accent
See also
foot
Robinson Jeffers

The methods for creating poetic rhythm vary across languages and between poetic traditions. Languages are often described as having

subsaharan languages.[30]

Metrical rhythm generally involves precise arrangements of stresses or syllables into repeated patterns called

classical languages, on the other hand, while the metrical units are similar, vowel length rather than stresses define the meter. Old English poetry used a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line.[31]

The chief device of ancient

entering tone
. Note that other classifications may have as many as eight tones for Chinese and six for Vietnamese.

The formal patterns of meter used in Modern English verse to create rhythm no longer dominate contemporary English poetry. In the case of free verse, rhythm is often organized based on looser units of cadence than a regular meter. 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.[33] Jeffers experimented with sprung rhythm as an alternative to accentual rhythm.[34]

Meter

Main articles:
Systems of scansion
Homer

In the Western poetic tradition,

Greek poetry, and was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho, and by the great tragedians of Athens. Similarly, "dactylic hexameter," comprises six feet per line, of which the dominant kind of foot is the "dactyl." Dactylic hexameter was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, the earliest extant examples of which are the works of Homer and Hesiod. More recently, iambic pentameter and dactylic hexameter have been used by William Shakespeare and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
, respectively.

Meter is often scanned based on the arrangement of "

poetic feet" into lines.[35]
In English, each foot usually includes one syllable with a stress and one or two without a stress. In other languages, it may be a combination of the number of syllables and the length of the vowel that determines how the foot is parsed, where one syllable with a long vowel may be treated as the equivalent of two syllables with short vowels. For example, in ancient Greek poetry, meter is based solely on syllable duration rather than stress. In some languages, such as English, stressed syllables are typically pronounced with greater volume, greater length, and higher pitch, and are the basis for poetic meter. In ancient Greek, these attributes were independent of each other; long vowels and syllables including a vowel plus more than one consonant actually had longer duration, approximately double that of a short vowel, while pitch and stress (dictated by the accent) were not associated with duration and played no role in the meter. Thus, a dactylic hexameter line could be envisioned as a musical phrase with six measures, each of which contained either a half note followed by two quarter notes (i.e. a long syllable followed by two short syllables), or two half notes (i.e. two long syllables); thus, the substitution of two short syllables for one long syllable resulted in a measure of the same length. Such substitution in a stress language, such as English, would not result in the same rhythmic regularity. In
pitches and lengths of syllables.[37]

As an example of how a line of meter is defined, in English-language

inverted, meaning that the stress falls on the first syllable.[38]
The generally accepted names for some of the most commonly used kinds of feet include:

One of Henry Holiday's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, which is written predominantly in anapestic tetrameter: "In the midst of the word he was trying to say / In the midst of his laughter and glee / He had softly and suddenly vanished away / For the snark was a boojum, you see."
  • 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
  • anapest
    – two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable
  • spondee – two stressed syllables together
  • pyrrhic – two unstressed syllables together (rare, usually used to end dactylic hexameter)

The number of metrical feet in a line are described in Greek terminology as follows:

There are a wide range of names for other types of feet, right up to a

Vedic
, often have concepts similar to the iamb and dactyl to describe common combinations of long and short sounds.

Each of these types of feet has a certain "feel," whether alone or in combination with other feet. The iamb, for example, is the most natural form of rhythm in the English language, and generally produces a subtle but stable verse.[39] The dactyl, on the other hand, almost gallops along. And, as readers of The Night Before Christmas or Dr. Seuss realize, the anapest is perfect for a light-hearted, comic feel.[40]

There is debate over how useful a multiplicity of different "feet" is in describing meter. For example, Robert Pinsky has argued that while dactyls are important in classical verse, English dactylic verse uses dactyls very irregularly and can be better described based on patterns of iambs and anapests, feet which he considers natural to the language.[41] Actual rhythm is significantly more complex than the basic scanned meter described above, and many scholars have sought to develop systems that would scan such complexity. Vladimir Nabokov noted that overlaid on top of the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse was a separate pattern of accents resulting from the natural pitch of the spoken words, and suggested that the term "scud" be used to distinguish an unaccented stress from an accented stress.[42]

Metrical patterns

Main article:
Meter (poetry)

Different traditions and genres of poetry tend to use different meters, ranging from the Shakespearian iambic pentameter and the Homeric dactylic hexameter to the Anapestic tetrameter used in many nursery rhymes. However, a number of variations to the established meter are common, both to provide emphasis or attention to a given foot or line and to avoid boring repetition. For example, the stress in a foot may be inverted, a caesura (or pause) may be added (sometimes in place of a foot or stress), or the final foot in a line may be given a feminine ending to soften it or be replaced by a spondee to emphasize it and create a hard stop. Some patterns (such as iambic pentameter) tend to be fairly regular, while other patterns, such as dactylic hexameter, tend to be highly irregular. Regularity can vary between language. In addition, different patterns often develop distinctively in different languages, so that, for example, iambic tetrameter in Russian will generally reflect a regularity in the use of accents to reinforce the meter, which does not occur or occurs to a much lesser extent in English.[43]

Alexander Pushkin

Some common metrical patterns, with notable examples of poets and poems who use them, include:

Rhyme, alliteration, assonance

Main articles: Rhyme, Alliterative verse, and Assonance
The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written in alliterative verse and in paragraph form, not separated into lines or stanzas.

Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance are ways of creating repetitive patterns of sound. They may be used as an independent structural element in a poem, to reinforce rhythmic patterns, or as an ornamental element.[51]

Rhyme consists of identical ("hard-rhyme") or similar ("soft-rhyme") sounds placed at the ends of lines or at predictable locations within lines ("internal rhyme").[52] Languages vary in the richness of their rhyming structures; Italian, for example, has a rich rhyming structure permitting maintenance of a limited set of rhymes throughout a lengthy poem. The richness results from word endings that follow regular forms. English, with its irregular word endings adopted from other languages, is less rich in rhyme.[53] The degree of richness of a language's rhyming structures plays a substantial role in determining what poetic forms are commonly used in that language.

Alliteration and assonance played a key role in structuring early Germanic, Norse and Old English forms of poetry. 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. This can be compared to an ornamental use of alliteration in most Modern European poetry, where alliterative patterns are not formal or carried through full stanzas.[54] Alliteration is particularly useful in languages with less rich rhyming structures. Assonance, where the use of similar vowel sounds within a word rather than similar sounds at the beginning or end of a word, was widely used in skaldic poetry, but goes back to the Homeric epic. Because verbs carry much of the pitch in the English language, assonance can loosely evoke the tonal elements of Chinese poetry and so is useful in translating Chinese poetry. Consonance occurs where a consonant sound is repeated throughout a sentence without putting the sound only at the front of a word. Consonance provokes a more subtle effect than alliteration and so is less useful as a structural element.

In 'A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry' (Longmans, 1969) Geoffrey Leech identified six different types of sound patterns or rhyme forms. These are defined as six possible ways in which either one or two of the structural parts of the related words can vary. The unvarying parts are in upper case/bold. C symbolises a consonant cluster, not a single consonant, V a vowel:

1) Alliteration: C v c great/grow send/sit
2) Assonance: c V c great/fail send/bell
3) Consonance: c v C great/meat send/hand
4) Reverse Rhyme: C V c great/grazed send/sell
5) Pararhyme: C v C great/groat send/sound
6) Rhyme: c V C great/bait send/end

Rhyming schemes

Main article: Rhyme scheme
Dante and Beatrice see God as a point of light surrounded by angels; from Gustave Doré's illustrations to the Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto 28.

In many languages, including modern European languages and Arabic, poets use rhyme in set patterns as a structural element for specific poet forms, such as

Al Andalus (modern Spain).[55] Arabic language poets used rhyme extensively from the first development of literary Arabic in the sixth century, as in their long, rhyming qasidas. Some rhyming schemes have become associated with a specific language, culture or period, while other rhyming schemes have achieved use across languages, cultures or time periods. 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.

Most rhyme schemes are described using letters that correspond to sets of rhymes, so if the first, second and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme with each other and the third line does not rhyme, the quatrain is said to have an "a-a-b-a" rhyme scheme. This rhyme scheme is the one used, for example, in the rubaiyat form.[56] Similarly, an "a-b-b-a" quatrain (what is known as "enclosed rhyme") is used in such forms as the Petrarchan sonnet.[57] Some types of more complicated rhyming schemes have developed names of their own, separate from the "a-b-c" convention, such as the ottava rima and terza rima. The types and use of differing rhyming schemes is discussed further in the main article.

Ottava rima

Ottava rima is a rhyming scheme using a stanza of eight lines with an alternating a-b rhyming scheme for the first six lines followed by a closing couplet. First used by Boccaccio, it was developed for heroic epics but has also been used for mock-heroic poetry.

Dante and terza rima

Dante's Divine Comedy[58] is written in terza rima, where each stanza has three lines, with the first and third rhyming, and the second line rhyming with the first and third lines of the next stanza (thus, a-b-a / b-c-b / c-d-c, et cetera.) in a chain rhyme. The terza rima provides a flowing, progressive sense to the poem, and used skilfully it can evoke a sense of motion, both forward and backward. Terza rima is appropriately used in lengthy poems in languages with rich rhyming schemes (such as Italian, with its many common word endings).[59]

Form

Anwar Masood, Punjabi poet

Poetic form is more flexible in modernist and post-modernist poetry, and continues to be less structured than in previous literary eras. Many modern poets eschew recognisable structures or forms, and write in

cantos. The broader visual presentation of words and calligraphy can also be utilized. These basic units of poetic form are often combined into larger structures, called poetic forms or poetic modes (see following section), such as in the sonnet or haiku
.

Lines and stanzas

Poetry is often separated into lines on a page. These lines may be based on the number of metrical feet, or may emphasize a rhyming pattern at the ends of lines. Lines may serve other functions, particularly where the poem is not written in a formal metrical pattern. Lines can separate, compare or contrast thoughts expressed in different units, or can highlight a change in tone. See the article on line breaks for information about the division between lines.

Lines of poems are often organized into

distich), three lines a triplet (or tercet), four lines a quatrain, five lines a quintain (or cinquain), six lines a sestet, and eight lines an octet
. These lines may or may not relate to each other by rhyme or rhythm. For example, a couplet may be two lines with identical meters which rhyme or two lines held together by a common meter alone. Stanzas often have related couplets or triplets within them.

Alexander Blok's poem, "Noch, ulitsa, fonar, apteka" ("Night, street, lamp, drugstore"), on a wall in Leiden.

Other poems may be organized into verse paragraphs, in which regular rhymes with established rhythms are not used, but the poetic tone is instead established by a collection of rhythms, alliterations, and rhymes established in paragraph form. Many medieval poems were written in verse paragraphs, even where regular rhymes and rhythms were used.

In many forms of poetry, stanzas are interlocking, so that the rhyming scheme or other structural elements of one stanza determine those of succeeding stanzas. Examples of such interlocking stanzas include, for example, the ghazal and the villanelle, where a refrain (or, in the case of the villanelle, refrains) is established in the first stanza which then repeats in subsequent stanzas. Related to the use of interlocking stanzas is their use to separate thematic parts of a poem. For example, the strophe, antistrophe and epode of the ode form are often separated into one or more stanzas. In such cases, or where structures are meant to be highly formal, a stanza will usually form a complete thought, consisting of full sentences and cohesive thoughts.

In some cases, particularly lengthier formal poetry such as some forms of epic poetry, stanzas themselves are constructed according to strict rules and then combined. In skaldic poetry, the dróttkvætt stanza had eight lines, each having three "lifts" produced with alliteration or assonance. In addition to two or three alliterations, the odd numbered lines had partial rhyme of consonants with dissimilar vowels, not necessarily at the beginning of the word; the even lines contained internal rhyme in set syllables (not necessarily at the end of the word). Each half-line had exactly six syllables, and each line ended in a trochee. The arrangement of dróttkvætts followed far less rigid rules than the construction of the individual dróttkvætts.

Visual presentation

Main article: Visual poetry
File:Algeria hymne.jpg
Arabic poetry

Even before the advent of printing, the visual appearance of poetry often added meaning or depth. Acrostic poems conveyed meanings in the initial letters of lines or in letters at other specific places in a poem. 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.

With the advent of

meaning, ambiguity or irony, or simply to create an aesthetically pleasing form.[60] In its most extreme form, this can lead to concrete poetry or asemic writing.[61]

Diction

Main article: Poetic diction
Illustration for the cover of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Goblin Market used complex poetic diction in nursery rhyme form: "We must not look at goblin men, / We must not buy their fruits: / Who knows upon what soil they fed / Their hungry thirsty roots?"

makars
.

Poetic diction can include rhetorical devices such as simile and metaphor, as well as tones of voice, such as irony.[62] Aristotle wrote in the Poetics that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor."[63] Since the rise of Modernism, some poets have opted for a poetic diction that deemphasizes rhetorical devices, attempting instead the direct presentation of things and experiences and the exploration of tone. On the other hand, Surrealists have pushed rhetorical devices to their limits, making frequent use of catachresis.

symbols or allusions that deepen the meaning or effect of its words without constructing a full allegory
.

Another strong element of poetic diction can be the use of vivid imagery for effect. The juxtaposition of unexpected or impossible images is, for example, a particularly strong element in surrealist poetry and haiku. Vivid images are often, as well, endowed with symbolism.

Many poetic dictions use repetitive phrases for effect, either a short phrase (such as Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" or "the wine-dark sea") or a longer

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Antony's repetition of the words, "For Brutus is an honorable man," moves from a sincere tone to one that exudes irony.[65]

Forms

Specific poetic forms have been developed by many cultures. In more developed, closed or "received" poetic forms, the 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. Described below are some common forms of poetry widely used across a number of languages. Additional forms of poetry may be found in the discussions of poetry of particular cultures or periods and in the glossary.

Sonnets

Shakespeare
Main article: Sonnet

Among the most common forms of poetry through the ages is the

Oxford Book of English Verse.[66]

Jintishi

Du Fu
Main article: Jintishi

The

Tang Dynasty (8th century). There are several variations on the basic form of the jintishi
.

Sestina

Main article: Sestina

The sestina has six stanzas, each comprising six unrhymed lines, in which the words at the end of the first stanza’s lines reappear in a rolling pattern in the other stanzas. The poem then ends with a three-line stanza in which the words again appear, two on each line.

Villanelle

W. H. Auden
Main article: Villanelle

The Villanelle is a nineteen-line poem made up of five triplets with a closing quatrain; the poem is characterized by having two refrains, initially used in the first and third lines of the first stanza, and then alternately used at the close of each subsequent stanza until the final quatrain, which is concluded by the two refrains. The remaining lines of the poem have an a-b alternating rhyme. The villanelle has been used regularly in the English language since the late nineteenth century by such poets as Dylan Thomas,[67] W. H. Auden,[68] and Elizabeth Bishop.[69] It is a form that has gained increased use at a time when the use of received forms of poetry has generally been declining.[citation needed]

Pantoum

Main article: Pantoum

The pantoum is a rare form of poetry similar to a villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next.

Rondeau

Main article:
Rondeau (poetry)

The rondeau was originally a French form, written on two rhymes with fifteen lines, using the first part of the first line as a refrain.

Tanka

Main article: Waka (poetry) § Tanka
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

onji (phonological units identical to morae), structured in a 5-7-5 7-7 pattern. There is generally a shift in tone and subject matter between the upper 5-7-5 phrase and the lower 7-7 phrase. 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. Tanka was originally the shorter form of Japanese formal poetry, and was used more heavily to explore personal rather than public themes. It thus had a more informal poetic diction. By the 13th century, tanka had become the dominant form of Japanese poetry, and it is still widely written today. The 31-mora rule is generally ignored by poets writing literary tanka in languages other than Japanese.

Haiku

Main article: Haiku

Haiku is a popular form of unrhymed Japanese poetry, which evolved in the 17th century from the hokku, or opening verse of a renku. Generally written in a single vertical line, the haiku contains three sections totalling 17 onji (see above, at Tanka), structured in a 5-7-5 pattern. Traditionally, haiku contain (1) a kireji, or cutting word, usually placed at the end of one of the poem's three sections; and (2) a kigo, or season-word. The most famous exponent of the haiku was Matsuo Bashō (1644 - 1694). An example of his writing:[70]

富士の風や扇にのせて江戸土産
fuji no kaze ya oogi ni nosete Edo miyage
the wind of Mt. Fuji
I've brought on my fan!
a gift from Edo

Ruba'i

Main article:
Ruba'i
File:Omar Chayyam.jpg
Omar Khayyam

Edward Fitzgerald
; an example is given below:

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.

Sijo

Main article: Sijo

Sijo is a short musical lyric practiced by Korean poets. It is usually written as three lines, each averaging 14-16 syllables, for a total of 44-46 syllables. There is a pause in the middle of each line and so, in English, a sijo is sometimes printed in six lines rather than three. An example is given below:

You ask how many friends I have? Water and stone, bamboo and pine.
The moon rising over the eastern hill is a joyful comrade.
Besides these five companions, what other pleasure should I ask?

Ode

Horace
Main article: Ode

Persian poetry
.

Ghazal

Main article: Ghazal
See also: Gazel

The ghazal (

Azerbaijani, Urdu and Bengali poetry. In classic form, the ghazal has from five to fifteen rhyming couplets that share a refrain
at the end of the second line. This refrain may be of one or several syllables, and is preceded by a rhyme. Each line has an identical meter. Each couplet forms a complete thought and stands alone, and the overall ghazal often reflects on a theme of unattainable love or divinity. The last couplet generally includes the signature of the author.

As with other forms with a long history in many languages, many variations have been developed, including forms with a quasi-musical poetic diction in

Persian poet who lived in Konya
, in present-day Turkey.

Acrostic

Main article: Acrostic

An acrostic (from the late Greek akróstichon, from ákros, "top", and stíchos, "verse") is a poem or other form of writing in an alphabetic script, in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out another message. A form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous acrostic was made in Greek for the acclamation JESUS CHRIST, GOD'S SON, SAVIOUR which in Greek is: Iesous KHristos, THeou Uios, Soter (kh and th being each one letter in Greek and u is also y). The initials spell IKHTHUS same as Ichthys, Greek for fish; hence the frequent use of the fish by early Christians and up to now as a symbol for Jesus Christ.[1]

Canzone

Main article: Canzone

Literally "song" in Italian, a canzone (plural: canzoni) (cognate with English to chant) is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal. Sometimes a composition which is simple and songlike is designated as a canzone, especially if it is by a non-Italian; a good example is the aria "Voi che sapete" from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

Cinquain

Main article: Cinquain

While "quintain" is the general term applied to poetic forms using a 5-line pattern, there are specific forms within that category that are defined by specific rules and guidelines. The term "CINQUAIN" (pronounced SING-cane, the plural is "cinquains") as applied by modern poets most correctly refers to a form invented by the American poet Adelaide Crapsey. The first examples of these were published in 1915 in The Complete Poems, roughly a year after her death. Her cinquain form was inspired by Japanese haiku and Tanka (a form of Waka).

Other forms

Other forms of poetry include:

  • Carmina figurata
  • Concrete poetry: Word arrangement, typeface, color or other visual effects are used to complement or dramatize the meaning of the words used; cinquains, which have five lines with two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, respectively, and free verse, which 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.
  • Fixed verse
  • Folk song
  • Free verse
  • Minnesang
  • Murabba
  • Pastourelle
  • Poetry slam: This is a modern style of spoken word poetry, frequently associated with a distinctive style of delivery.
  • Stev
  • Yoik

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.[73] Some commentators view genres as natural forms of literature.[74] Others view the study of genres as the study of how different works relate and refer to other works.[75]

Epic poetry is one commonly identified genre, often defined as lengthy poems concerning events of a heroic or important nature to the culture of the time.[76] Lyric poetry, which tends to be shorter, melodic, and contemplative, is another commonly identified genre. Some commentators may organize bodies of poetry into further subgenres, and individual poems may be seen as a part of many different genres.[77] In many cases, poetic genres show common features as a result of a common tradition, even across cultures.

Described below are some common genres, but the classification of genres, the description of their characteristics, and even the reasons for undertaking a classification into genres can take many forms.

Narrative poetry

Main article: Narrative poetry
Chaucer

human interest
.

Narrative poetry may be the oldest type of poetry. Many scholars of

Slavic heroic poems—is performance poetry with roots in a preliterate oral tradition. It has been speculated that some features that distinguish poetry from prose, such as meter, alliteration and kennings, once served as memory aids for bards
who recited traditional tales.

Notable

Alfred Tennyson
.

Epic poetry

Main article: Epic poetry
Valmiki

Epic poetry is a genre of poetry, and a major form of

Shahnama, Nizami (or Nezami)'s Khamse (Five Books), and the Epic of King Gesar
.

While the composition of

Nobel prize to a great extent on the basis of his epic, Omeros.[78]

Dramatic poetry

Main articles:
Chinese Opera, and Noh
Goethe

Dramatic poetry is drama written in verse to be spoken or sung, and appears in varying, sometimes related forms in many cultures. Verse drama may have developed out of earlier oral epics, such as the Sanskrit and Greek epics.[79]

Chinese Opera.[81] East Asian verse dramas also include Japanese Noh
.

Examples of dramatic poetry in

Vis and Ramin,[83] and Vahshi's tragedy of Farhad
.

Satirical poetry

Poetry can be a powerful vehicle for

satires, whose insults stung the entire spectrum of society
.

John Wilmot

The same is true of the English satirical tradition. Embroiled in the feverish politics of the time and stung by an attack on him by his former friend,

Poet Laureate, produced in 1682 Mac Flecknoe, one of the greatest pieces of sustained invective in the English language, subtitled "A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S." In this, the late, notably mediocre poet, Richard Flecknoe
, was imagined to be contemplating who should succeed him as ruler "of all the realms of Nonsense absolute" to "reign and wage immortal war on wit."

Bocage

Another master of 17th-century English satirical poetry was John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. He was known for ruthless satires such as "A Satyr Against Mankind" (1675) and a "A Satyr on Charles II."

Another exemplar of English satirical poetry was

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 greatest satirical poets outside England include Poland's Ignacy Krasicki, Azerbaijan's Sabir and Portugal's Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage
, commonly known as Bocage.

Lyric poetry

Main article: Lyric poetry
Christine de Pizan

reading
.

Though lyric poetry has long celebrated love, many

St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila. The tradition of lyric poetry based on spiritual experience was continued by later poets such as John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Antonio Machado and T. S. Eliot
.

Though the most popular form for western lyric poetry to take may be the 14-line

Shakespeare, lyric poetry shows a bewildering variety of forms, including increasingly, in the 20th century, unrhymed
ones. Lyric poetry is the most common type of poetry, as it deals intricately with an author's own emotions and views.

Elegy

Main article: Elegy
Thomas Gray

An elegy is a mournful, melancholy or plaintive poem, especially a lament for the dead or a funeral song. The term "elegy," which originally denoted a type of poetic meter (elegiac meter), commonly describes a poem of mourning. An elegy may also reflect something that seems to the author to be strange or mysterious. The elegy, as a reflection on a death, on a sorrow more generally, or on something mysterious, may be classified as a form of lyric poetry. In a related sense that harks back to ancient poetic traditions of sung poetry, the word "elegy" may also denote a type of musical work, usually of a sad or somber nature.

William Butler Yeats (1916), Rainer Maria Rilke (1922), Virginia Woolf (1927), Federico García Lorca (1935), Kamau Brathwaite
(born 1930).

Verse fable

Main article: Fable
Ignacy Krasicki

The

meter and rhyme patterns; Ignacy Krasicki, for example, in his Fables and Parables, used 13-syllable lines in rhyming couplets
.

Notable verse

fabulist
.

An example of a verse fable is Krasicki's "The Lamb and the Wolves":

Aggression ever finds cause if sufficiently pressed.
Two
lamb
in the forest
And were about to pounce. Quoth the lamb: "What right have you?"
"You're toothsome, weak, in the wood." — The wolves dined sans ado.

Prose poetry

Main article: Prose poetry
Charles Baudelaire, by Gustave Courbet.

short short story," "flash fiction"). It qualifies as poetry because of its conciseness, use of metaphor
, and special attention to language.

While some examples of earlier prose strike modern readers as poetic, prose poetry is commonly regarded as having originated in 19th-century France, where its practitioners included Aloysius Bertrand, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé.

The genre has subsequently found notable exemplars in different languages:

Julio Cortázar

Since the late 1980s especially, prose poetry has gained increasing popularity, with entire journals devoted solely to that genre.[citation needed]

See also

  • List of basic poetry topics
  • Poetry terminology

Notes

  1. ISBN 0140446362
    .
  2. ^ See, for example, Immanuel Kant (J.H. Bernhard, Trans). Critique of Judgment. Dover (2005).
  3. ISBN 0811202089
    .
  4. ^ John R. Strachan & Richard G. Terry, Poetry, (Edinburgh University Press, 2000). pp119.
  5. ^ As a contemporary example of that ethos, see T.S. Eliot, "The Function of Criticism" in Selected Essays. Paperback Edition (Faber & Faber, 1999). pp13-34.
  6. ^ James Longenbach, Modern Poetry After Modernism (Oxford University Press US, 1997). pp9, pp103, and passim.
  7. ^ pp xxvii-xxxiii of the introduction, in Michael Schmidt (Ed.), The Harvill Book of Twentieth Century Poetry in English (Harvill Press, 1999)
  8. ^ As would be evident from the sources, particularly reading the previous two sources referenced, it should be noted that, at least in the works of well-known poets, there is usually a poetic reason for non-poetic effects, e.g contrast, surprise, or to allow the use of irregular rhythms in a poetic way.
  9. ^ Many scholars, particularly those researching the Homeric tradition and the oral epics of the Balkans, suggest that early writing shows clear traces of older oral poetic traditions, including the use of repeated phrases as building blocks in larger poetic units. A rhythmic and repetitious form would make a long story easier to remember and retell, before writing was available as an aide-memoire.
  10. ISBN 0521337941
    .
  11. ^ N.K. Sanders (Trans.). The Epic of Gilgamesh. London, England: Penguin Books, revised edition (1972), at 7–8.
  12. ^ See, e.g., Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. "The Message (song)," Sugar Hill, (1982).
  13. ISBN 0-670-03485-1
    .
  14. ISBN 0809094355
    .
  15. epigrams of Martial and Catullus
    .
  16. ^ In ancient Greece, medical and scholarly works were often written in metrical form. A millennium and a half later, many of Avicenna's medical texts were written in verse.
  17. ^ Władysław Tatarkiewicz, "The Concept of Poetry," Dialectics and Humanism, vol. II, no. 2 (spring 1975), p. 13.
  18. ^ Heath (ed), Aristotle's Poetics, 1997.
  19. ISBN 90-04-11964-7
    .
  20. ISBN 0-8018-8055-6
    (for example, page 239) for the prominence of Aristotle and the Poetics on the Renaissance curriculum.
  21. ^ Immanuel Kant (J.H. Bernard, Trans.). Critique of Judgment at 131, for example, argues that the nature of poetry as a self-consciously abstract and beautiful form raises it to the highest level among the verbal arts, with tone or music following it, and only after that the more logical and narrative prose.
  22. ^ Christensen, A., Crisafulli-Jones, L., Galigani, G. and Johnson, A. (Eds). The Challenge of Keats. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi, (2000).
  23. ^ See, for example, Dylan Thomas's discussion of the poet as creator in Quite Early One Morning. New York, New York: New Directions Press, (1967).
  24. ^ The title of "Ars Poetica" alludes to Horace's commentary of the same title. The poem sets out a range of dicta for what poetry ought to be, before concluding with its classic lines.[1]
  25. Odysseus Elytis
    .
  26. ^ See, for example, T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land, in T. S. Eliot. The Waste Land and Other Poems. London, England: Faber & Faber, (1940)."
  27. Death of the Author
    " in Image-Music-Text. New York, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1978).
  28. ^ Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry at 52.
  29. ^ See, for example, Julia Schülter. Rhythmic Grammar, Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter, (2005).
  30. ^ See Yip. Tone. (2002), which includes a number of maps showing the distribution of tonal languages.
  31. ISBN 0385062133
    .
  32. ISBN 81-206-0400-8
    . (Original in Tamil with English translation).
  33. ^ See, for example, Marianne Moore. Idiosyncrasy and Technique. Berkeley, California: University of California, (1958), or, for examples, William Carlos Williams. The Broken Span. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, (1941).
  34. ^ Robinson Jeffers. Selected Poems. New York, New York: Vintage, (1965).
  35. ISBN 0-07-553606-4
    .
  36. ISBN 0-571-09135-0
    .
  37. ISBN 0374526176
    .
  38. ^ Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry.
  39. ^ John Thompson, The Founding of English Meter.
  40. ^ See, for example, "Yertle the Turtle" in Dr. Seuss. Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. New York: Random House, (1958), lines from "Yurtle the Turtle" are scanned in the discussion of anapestic tetrameter.
  41. ^ Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry at 66.
  42. ISBN 0691017603
    .
  43. ^ Nabokov. Notes on Prosody.
  44. ^ Two versions of Paradise Lost are freely available on-line from Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg text version 1 and Project Gutenberg text version 2.
  45. ^ The original text, as translated by Samuel Butler, is available at Wikisource.[2]
  46. ^ The full text is available online both in Russian[3] and as translated into English by Charles Johnston.[4] Please see the pages on Eugene Onegin and on Notes on Prosody and the references on those pages for discussion of the problems of translation and of the differences between Russian and English iambic tetrameter.
  47. ^ The full text of "The Raven" is available at Wikisource[5].
  48. ^ The full text of "The Hunting of the Snark" is available at Wikisource.[6]
  49. ^ The full text of Don Juan is available on-line.[7]
  50. ^ See the Text of the play in French as well as an English translation,
    • Phaedra at Project Gutenberg
  51. Tamburlaine the Great available online at Project Gutenberg
    .
  52. ISBN 0374176744
    ; the Pinsky translation includes many demonstrations of the use of soft rhyme.
  53. ^ Dante (1994).
  54. ISBN 0451628233
    .
  55. ISBN 0812213246
    . Irish poetry also employed rhyme relatively early, and may have influenced the development of rhyme in other European languages.
  56. ^ Indeed, in translating the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald sought to retain the scheme in English. The original text is available from the Gutenberg Project on-line for free.etext #246
  57. ^ Works by Petrarch at Project Gutenberg
  58. ^ The Divine Comedy at wikisource.
  59. ^ See Robert Pinsky's discussion of the difficulties of replicating terza rima in English in Robert Pinsky (trans). The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation. (1994).
  60. ISBN 1565844041
    .
  61. ^ A good pre-modernist example of concrete poetry is the poem about the mouse's tale in the shape of a long tail in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, available in Wikisource. [8]
  62. ^ See, for example, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge for a well-known example of symbolism and metaphor used in poetry. The albatross that is killed by the mariner is a traditional symbol of good luck, and its death takes on metaphorical implications.
  63. ^ See
  64. Jean de la Fontaine's Fables (influenced by Aesop's) in the 17th century (available in French on wikisource).[9]
    .
  65. ^ See Act III, Scene II in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, available at Wikisource.[10]
  66. Oxford Book of English Verse
    or the Norton Anthology of Poetry, with many people counting poems or pages allocated to a given poet or subject.
  67. Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
    " in Dylan Thomas. In Country Sleep and Other Poems. New York, New York: New Directions Publications, (1952).
  68. ^ "Villanelle", in W. H. Auden. Collected Poems. New York, New York: Random House, (1945).
  69. ^ "One Art", in Elizabeth Bishop. Geography III. New York, New York, Farar, Straus & Giroux, (1976).
  70. ^ Etsuko Yanagibori, BASHO'S HAIKU ON THE THEME OF MT. FUJI: FROM THE PERSONAL NOTEBOOK OF Etsuko Yanagibori, link
  71. ^ The extant Odes of Pindar as translated by Ernest Myers are freely available on-line from Gutenberg.
  72. ^ In particular, the translations of Horace's odes by John Dryden were influential in establishing the form in English, though Dryden utilizes rhyme in his translations where Horace did not.
  73. ^ For a general discussion of genre theory on the internet, see Daniel Chandler's Introduction to Genre Theory[11].
  74. Northrup Frye. Anatomy of Criticism
    . Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, (1957).
  75. ISBN 0231139780
    .
  76. ^ Hatto, A. T. Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry (Vol. I: The Traditions ed.). Maney Publishing.
  77. ^ Shakespeare parodied such analysis in Hamlet, describing the genres as consisting of "tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral..."
  78. ^ See Press Release from the Nobel Committee, [12], accessed January 20, 2008.
  79. ^ A. Berriedale Keith, Sanskrit Drama, Motilal Banarsidass Publ (1998).
  80. ^ A. Berriedale Keith at 57-58.
  81. ^ William Dolby, "Early Chinese Plays and Theatre," in Colin Mackerras, Chinese Theatre, University of Hawaii Press, 1983, p. 17.
  82. ISBN 0-930872-52-5
    .
  83. ^ Dick Davis (January 6, 2005), "Vis o Rāmin," in Encyclopaedia Iranica Online Edition. Accessed on April 25, 2008.

References

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Look up poetry in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Anthologies

Main article: List of poetry anthologies

Scansion and form

Critical and historical works

  • Cleanth Brooks. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. New York, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, (1947).
  • William K. Wimsatt, Jr. & Cleanth Brooks. Literary Criticism: A Short History. New York, New York: Vintage Books, (1957).
  • T. S. Eliot. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. London, England: Methuen Publishing, Ltd., (1920).
  • George Gascoigne. Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of English Verse or Ryme[13].
  • Ezra Pound. ABC of Reading. London, England: Faber, (1951).
  • Władysław Tatarkiewicz. "The Concept of Poetry," translated by Christopher Kasparek, Dialectics and Humanism: the Polish Philosophical Quarterly, vol. II, no. 2 (spring 1975), pp. 13–24.
  • John Thompson. The Founding of English Meter. New York, New York: Columbia University Press (1961).

Linguistics and language

Other works

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Prose is

films, letters, history, philosophy, biography
, and many other forms of communication.

Poetry and prose

Prose generally lacks the formal structure of

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
, Monsieur Jourdain asks something to be written in neither verse nor prose. A philosophy master says to him, "Sir, there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse". Jourdain replies, "By my faith! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing anything about it, and I am much obliged to you for having taught me that."

Notes

  1. ^ "prose." World Encyclopedia. 2005. Retrieved April 16, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O142-prose.html

See also


(prose is usually written in complete sentences and follows rules of grammar as a matter of course

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