What Is Poetry?
An Introduction
by Mark Flanagan
Updated November 04, 2018
1 There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. William Wordsworth
defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," and Emily
Dickinson said, "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can
warm me, I know that is poetry." Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: "Poetry is
5 what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes
me want to do this or that or nothing."
Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people. Homer's epic, "The Odyssey," described
the wanderings of the adventurer, Odysseus, and has been called the greatest story
10 ever told. During the English Renaissance, dramatic poets such as John Milton,
Christopher Marlowe, and of course William Shakespeare gave us enough to fill
textbooks, lecture halls, and universities. Poems from the Romantic period include
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Faust" (1808), Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla
Khan" (1816) and John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819).
15 Shall we go on? Because in order to do so, we would have to continue through
19th-century Japanese poetry, early Americans that include Emily Dickinson and
T.S. Eliot, postmodernism, experimentalists, form vs. free verse, slam...
So What Is Poetry?
20 Perhaps the characteristic most central to the definition of poetry is its unwillingness
to be defined, labeled, or nailed down. Poetry is the chiseled marble of language;
it's a paint-spattered canvas, but the poet uses words instead of paint, and the
canvas is you. Poetic definitions of poetry kind of spiral in on themselves, however,
like a dog eating itself from the tail up. Let's get nitty. Let's, in fact, get gritty. We can
25 likely render an accessible definition of poetry by simply looking at its form and its
purpose.
One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of
language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out
words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard,
30 even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's
1
emotive qualities, its backstory, its musical value, its double- or triple-entendres,
and even its spatial relationship on the page. The poet, through innovation in both
word choice and form, seemingly rends significance from thin air.
One may use prose to narrate, describe, argue, or define. There are equally
35 numerous reasons for writing poetry. But poetry, unlike prose, often has an
underlying and overarching purpose that goes beyond the literal. Poetry is
evocative. It typically provokes in the reader an intense emotion: joy, sorrow,
anger, catharsis, love... Poetry has the ability to surprise the reader with an "Ah-ha!"
experience and to give revelation, insight, and further understanding of elemental
40 truth and beauty. Like Keats said: "Beauty is truth. Truth, beauty./That is all ye know
on Earth and all ye need to know."
How's that? Do we have a definition yet? Let's sum it up like this: Poetry is
artistically rendering words in such a way as to evoke intense emotion or an
"ah-ha!" experience from the reader, being economical with language and often
45 writing in a set form. Boiling it down like that doesn't quite satisfy all the nuances,
the rich history, and the work that goes into selecting each word, phrase, metaphor,
and punctuation mark to craft a written piece of poetry, but it's a start.
It's difficult to shackle poetry with definitions. Poetry is not old, frail, and cerebral.
Poetry is stronger and fresher than you think. Poetry is imagination and will break
50 those chains faster than you can say "Harlem Renaissance."
To borrow a phrase, poetry is a riddle wrapped in an enigma swathed in a cardigan
sweater... or something like that. An ever-evolving genre, it will shirk definitions at
every turn. That continual evolution keeps it alive. Its inherent challenges to do it
well and its ability to get at the core of emotion or learning keep people writing it, for
55 the writers are just the first ones to have the ah-ha moments as they're putting the
words on the page (and revising them).
The Basics of Using Form in Writing Poetry: Rhythm and Rhyme
If poetry as a genre defies easy description, we can at least look at labels of
60 different kinds of forms. Writing in form doesn't just mean that you need to pick the
right words but that you need to have correct rhythm (prescribed stressed and
unstressed syllables), follow a rhyming scheme (alternate lines rhyme or
consecutive lines rhyme), or use a refrain or repeated line.
Rhythm: You may have heard about writing in iambic pentameter, but don't be
65 intimidated by the jargon. Iambic just means that there is an unstressed syllable
2
that comes before a stressed one. It has a "clip-clop," horse galloping feel. One
stressed and one unstressed syllable makes one "foot," of the rhythm, or meter,
and five in a row makes up pentameter. For example, look at this line from
Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet," which has the stressed syllables bolded: "But,
70 soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" Shakespeare was a master at
iambic pentameter.
Rhyme scheme: Many set forms follow a particular pattern to their rhyming. When
analyzing a rhyme scheme, lines are labeled with letters to note what ending of
each rhymes with which other. Take this stanza from Edgar Allen Poe's ballad
75 "Annabel Lee":
"It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
80 And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me."
The first and third lines rhyme, and the second, fourth, and sixth lines rhyme, which
means it has an a-b-a-b-c-b rhyme scheme, as "thought" does not rhyme with any
of the other lines. When lines rhyme and they're next to each other, they're called a
85 rhyming couplet. Three in a row is called a rhyming triplet. This example does not
have a rhyming couplet or triplet because the rhymes are on alternating lines.
Poetic Forms
Even young schoolchildren are familiar with forms such as the ballad form
90 (alternating rhyme scheme), the haiku (three lines made up of the following pattern:
five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables), and even the limerick—yes,
that's a poetic form in that it has a rhythm and rhyme scheme. It might not be
literary, but it is poetry.
Blank verse poems are written in an iambic format, but they don't carry a rhyme
95 scheme. If you want to try your hand at challenging, complex forms, those include
the sonnet (Shakespeare's bread and butter), villanelle (See Dylan Thomas's "Do
Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."), and sestina, which rotates line-ending
words in a specific pattern among its six stanzas. For terza rima, check out
translations of Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy," which follows this rhyme
100 scheme: aba, bcb, cdc, ded in iambic pentameter.
3
Free verse doesn't have any rhythm or rhyme scheme, though its words still need
to be written economically; words that start and end lines still have particular
weight, even if they don't rhyme or have to follow any particular metering pattern.
The more poetry you read, the better you'll be able to internalize the form and
105 invent within it. When the form seems second nature, then the words will flow from
your imagination to fill it more effectively than when you're first learning the form.
Masters in Their Field
The list of masterful poets is long—college courses long. To find what kinds you
110 like, read a wide variety of poetry, including those already mentioned here. Include
poets from around the world and all through time: from the "Tao Te Ching" to Robert
Bly and his translations (Pablo Neruda, Rumi, and many others). Read Langston
Hughes to Robert Frost. Walt Whitman to Maya Angelou. Sappho to Oscar Wilde.
The list goes on and on—and with poets of all nationalities and backgrounds putting
115 out work today, your study never really has to end, especially when you find
someone's work that sends electricity up your spine.
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-poetry-852737, accessed May 23 2019
4
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
(Sonnet 18)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Shall I compare thee1 to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion2 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines3,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
1
thee, thou = you, thy = your
2
skin colour, especially on the face
3
= and beauty falls away from beautiful people
5
Like as the waves make towards the
pebbled shore
(Sonnet 60)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
So do our minutes hasten to their end
Each changing place with that which goes before
In sequent toil all forwards do contend
Nativity, once in the main of light
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight
And time that gave doth now his gift confound
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
6
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
(Sonnet 130)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
7
On Being Brought from Africa to America
Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784)
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
8
London
William Blake (1757–1827)
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
9
Composed upon Westminster Bridge,
September 3, 1802
William Wordsworth 1770–1850
Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
10
How do I love thee?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
11
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
12
If—
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
13
To a Poor Old Woman
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand
They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her
You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand
Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her
14
The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
so much depends
Upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
15
Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
16
If We Must Die
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the if ;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
17
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth 1770–1850
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
18
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
who
a)s w(e loo)k
upnowgath
PPEGORHRASS
eringint(o-
aThe):l
eA
!p:
S a
(r
rIvInG .gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
,grasshopper;
19
maggie and milly and molly and may
E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
20
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
21
This Be The Verse
Philip Larkin (1922–1985)
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
22
Caged Bird
Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
A free bird leaps The free bird thinks of another breeze
on the back of the wind and the trade winds soft through the
and floats downstream sighing trees
till the current ends and the fat worms waiting on a dawn
and dips his wing bright lawn
in the orange sun rays and he names the sky his own.
and dares to claim the sky.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of
But a bird that stalks dreams
down his narrow cage his shadow shouts on a nightmare
can seldom see through scream
his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are
his wings are clipped and tied
his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
with a fearful trill of things unknown
of things unknown but longed for still
but longed for still and his tune is heard
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
on the distant hill for the caged bird
for the caged bird sings of freedom.
sings of freedom.
23
We Lived Happily During the War
Ilya Kaminsky (b. 1977)
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
24
It is dangerous to read newspapers
Margaret Atwood (*1939)
While I was building neat
castles in the sandbox,
The hasty pits were
filling with bulldozed corpses
and as I walked to the school
washed and combed, my feet
stepping on the cracks in the cement
detonated red bombs.
Now I am grownup
and literate, and I sit in my chair
as quietly as a fuse
And the jungles are flaming, the under-
brush is charged with soldiers,
the names on the difficult
maps go up in smoke.
I am the cause, i am a stockpile of chemical
toys, my body
Is a deadly gadget,
I reach out in love, my hands are guns,
my good intentions are completely lethal.
Even my
passive eyes transmute
Everything I look at to the pocked
black and white of a war photo,
how
can I stop myself
It is dangerous to read newspapers.
Each time I hit a key on my electric typewriter,
speaking of peaceful trees
another village explodes.
25
Refugees
Brian Bilston (Paul Millicheap) *1970
They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way
(now read from bottom to top)
26
Haiku
An old pond!
A frog jumps in—
the sound of water.
— Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
— Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)
Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.
— Richard Wright (1908-1960)
DIY Haiku
1. Write two lines about something beautiful in nature. If you want, look out the
window, and describe what you see. Try to "zoom in" on a small detail that
contains the feeling of the larger scene. Don't worry about counting syllables
yet.
2. Write a third line. It can be surprising or a continuation of the first two lines.
3. Now rewrite the poem, using the 5-syllable, 7-syllable, 5-syllable format.
27
