Poetry (derived from the Greek poiesis, "making") is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and

rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke

meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.

Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm, and intonation of a poem. Rhythm and meter are different,
although closely related. 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. Prosody also may be
used more specifically to refer to the scanning of poetic lines to show meter.

In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to a characteristic metrical
foot and the number of feet per line.[48] The number of metrical feet in a line are described using Greek
terminology: tetrameter for four feet and hexameter for six feet, for example.[49] Thus, "iambic
pentameter" is a meter comprising five feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the
"iamb". This metric system originated in ancient Greek poetry.

The most common metrical feet in English are:

Homer: Roman bust, based on Greek original

iamb – one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (e.g. des-cribe, in-clude, re-tract)

trochee—one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (e.g. pic-ture, flow-er)

dactyl – one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (e.g. an-no-tate, sim-i-lar)

anapaest—two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable (e.g. com-pre-hend)

spondee—two stressed syllables together (e.g. heart-beat, four-teen)

pyrrhic—two unstressed syllables together (rare, usually used to end dactylic hexameter)

Some common metrical patterns, with notable examples of poets and poems who use them, 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 Finnish national epic, The
Kalevala, is also in trochaic tetrameter, the natural rhythm of Finnish and Estonian)

Alexandrin (Jean Racine, Phèdre)

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. They can also carry a meaning separate from the repetitive sound patterns
created.

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").

Alliteration is the repetition of letters or letter-sounds at the beginning of two or more words
immediately succeeding each other, or at short intervals; or the recurrence of the same letter in
accented parts of words.

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.

Among major structural elements used in poetry are the line, the stanza or verse paragraph, and larger
combinations of stanzas or lines such as cantos. Also sometimes used are broader visual presentations
of words and calligraphy. These basic units of poetic form are often combined into larger structures,
called poetic forms or poetic modes as in the sonnet or haiku.

Poetry is often separated into lines on a page, in a process known as lineation. 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.
[81] See the article on line breaks for information about the division between lines.

Lines of poems are often organized into stanzas, which are denominated by the number of lines
included. Thus a collection of two lines is a couplet (or distich), three lines a triplet (or tercet), four lines
a quatrain, and so on. 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.

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.

Poetic diction treats the manner in which language is used, and refers not only to the sound but also to
the underlying meaning and its interaction with sound and form.[91] Many languages and poetic forms
have very specific poetic dictions, to the point where distinct grammars and dialects are used specifically
for poetry.
Poetic diction can include rhetorical devices such as simile and metaphor, as well as tones of voice, such
as irony.

Among the most common forms of poetry, popular from the Late Middle Ages on, is the sonnet, which
by the 13th century had become standardized as fourteen lines following a set rhyme scheme and
logical structure. Sonnets of all types often make use of a volta, or "turn," a point in the poem at which
an idea is turned on its head, a question is answered (or introduced), or the subject matter is further
complicated. This volta can often take the form of a "but" statement contradicting or complicating the
content of the earlier lines. Sonnets are particularly associated with high poetic diction, vivid imagery,
and romantic love, largely due to the influence of Petrarch as well as of early English practitioners such
as Edmund Spenser (who gave his name to the Spenserian sonnet), Michael Drayton, and Shakespeare,
whose sonnets are among the most famous in English poetry.

Shi (simplified Chinese: 诗; traditional Chinese: 詩; pinyin: shī; Wade–Giles: shih) Is the main type of
Classical Chinese poetry. Within this form of poetry the most important variations are "folk song" styled
verse (yuefu), "old style" verse (gushi), "modern style" verse (jintishi). In all cases, rhyming is obligatory.

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.

A limerick is a poem that consists of five lines and is often humorous. Rhythm is very important in
limericks for the first, second and fifth lines must have seven to ten syllables. However, the third and
fourth lines only need five to seven. All of the lines must rhyme and have the same rhythm.

Tanka is a form of unrhymed Japanese poetry, with five sections totalling 31 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 was originally the shorter form
of Japanese formal poetry (which was generally referred to as "waka"), and was used more heavily to
explore personal rather than public themes.

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, structured in a 5-7-5 pattern. Traditionally, haiku contain a kireji, or cutting
word, usually placed at the end of one of the poem's three sections, and a kigo, or season-word.
The khlong (โคลง, [kʰlōːŋ]) is among the oldest Thai poetic forms. This is reflected in its requirements
on the tone markings of certain syllables, which must be marked with mai ek (ไม้เอก, Thai
pronunciation: [máj èːk], ◌่) or mai tho (ไม้โท, [máj tʰōː], ◌้). This was likely derived from when the
Thai language had three tones (as opposed to today's five, a split which occurred during the Ayutthaya
Kingdom period), two of which corresponded directly to the aforementioned marks. It is usually
regarded as an advanced and sophisticated poetic form.

Odes were first developed by poets writing in ancient Greek, such as Pindar, and Latin, such as Horace.
Forms of odes appear in many of the cultures that were influenced by the Greeks and Latins.[125] The
ode generally has three parts: a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode. The antistrophes of the ode
possess similar metrical structures and, depending on the tradition, similar rhyme structures. In
contrast, the epode is written with a different scheme and structure. Odes have a formal poetic diction
and generally deal with a serious subject. The strophe and antistrophe look at the subject from different,
often conflicting, perspectives, with the epode moving to a higher level to either view or resolve the
underlying issues. Odes are often intended to be recited or sung by two choruses (or individuals), with
the first reciting the strophe, the second the antistrophe, and both together the epode. Over time,
differing forms for odes have developed with considerable variations in form and structure, but
generally showing the original influence of the Pindaric or Horatian ode. One non-Western form which
resembles the ode is the qasida in Persian poetry.

The ghazal (also ghazel, gazel, gazal, or gozol) is a form of poetry common in Arabic, Persian, 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. The ghazal often reflects on a theme of unattainable love or divinity.

Narrative poetry

Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that tells a story. Broadly it subsumes epic poetry, but the term
"narrative poetry" is often reserved for smaller works, generally with more appeal to human interest.
Narrative poetry may be the oldest type of poetry. Many scholars of Homer have concluded that his Iliad
and Odyssey were composed of compilations of shorter narrative poems that related individual
episodes. Much narrative poetry—such as Scottish and English ballads, and Baltic and 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 narrative poets have included Ovid, Dante, Juan Ruiz, William Langland, Chaucer, Fernando de
Rojas, Luís de Camões, Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, Adam Mickiewicz, Alexander
Pushkin, Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred Tennyson, and Anne Carson.
Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre that, unlike epic and dramatic poetry, does not attempt to tell a story but instead
is of a more personal nature. Poems in this genre tend to be shorter, melodic, and contemplative.
Rather than depicting characters and actions, it portrays the poet's own feelings, states of mind, and
perceptions. Notable poets in this genre include Christine de Pizan, John Donne, Charles Baudelaire,
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Antonio Machado, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Epic poetry

Epic poetry is a genre of poetry, and a major form of narrative literature. This genre is often defined as
lengthy poems concerning events of a heroic or important nature to the culture of the time. It recounts,
in a continuous narrative, the life and works of a heroic or mythological person or group of persons.
Examples of epic poems are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, the Nibelungenlied, Luís de
Camões' Os Lusíadas, the Cantar de Mio Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata, Valmiki's
Ramayana, Ferdowsi's Shahnama, Nizami (or Nezami)'s Khamse (Five Books), and the Epic of King Gesar.
While the composition of epic poetry, and of long poems generally, became less common in the west
after the early 20th century, some notable epics have continued to be written. Derek Walcott won a
Nobel prize to a great extent on the basis of his epic, Omeros.

Satirical poetry

Poetry can be a powerful vehicle for satire. The Romans had a strong tradition of satirical poetry, often
written for political purposes. A notable example is the Roman poet Juvenal's satires.

The same is true of the English satirical tradition. John Dryden (a Tory), the first Poet Laureate, produced
in 1682 Mac Flecknoe, subtitled "A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S." (a reference to Thomas
Shadwell). Another master of 17th-century English satirical poetry was John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of
Rochester. Satirical poets outside England include Poland's Ignacy Krasicki, Azerbaijan's Sabir and
Portugal's Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage.

Elegy

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.

Notable practitioners of elegiac poetry have included Propertius, Jorge Manrique, Jan Kochanowski,
Chidiock Tichborne, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, John Milton, Thomas Gray, Charlotte Turner Smith,
William Cullen Bryant, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Evgeny Baratynsky, Alfred
Tennyson, Walt Whitman, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Giannina Braschi, William Butler
Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Virginia Woolf.
Verse fable

The fable is an ancient literary genre, often (though not invariably) 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 (a "moral"). Verse fables have used a variety of meter and rhyme patterns.

Notable verse fabulists have included Aesop, Vishnu Sarma, Phaedrus, Marie de France, Robert
Henryson, Biernat of Lublin, Jean de La Fontaine, Ignacy Krasicki, Félix María de Samaniego, Tomás de
Iriarte, Ivan Krylov and Ambrose Bierce.

Dramatic poetry

Dramatic poetry is drama written in verse to be spoken or sung, and appears in varying, sometimes
related forms in many cultures. Greek tragedy in verse dates to the 6th century B.C., and may have been
an influence on the development of Sanskrit drama, just as Indian drama in turn appears to have
influenced the development of the bianwen verse dramas in China, forerunners of Chinese Opera. East
Asian verse dramas also include Japanese Noh. Examples of dramatic poetry in Persian literature include
Nizami's two famous dramatic works, Layla and Majnun and Khosrow and Shirin, Ferdowsi's tragedies
such as Rostam and Sohrab, Rumi's Masnavi, Gorgani's tragedy of Vis and Ramin, and Vahshi's tragedy of
Farhad.

Speculative poetry

Speculative poetry, also known as fantastic poetry (of which weird or macabre poetry is a major sub-
classification), is a poetic genre which deals thematically with subjects which are "beyond reality",
whether via extrapolation as in science fiction or via weird and horrific themes as in horror fiction. Such
poetry appears regularly in modern science fiction and horror fiction magazines. Edgar Allan Poe is
sometimes seen as the "father of speculative poetry". Poe's most remarkable achievement in the genre
was his anticipation, by three-quarters of a century, of the Big Bang theory of the universe's origin, in his
then much-derided 1848 essay (which, due to its very speculative nature, he termed a "prose poem"),
Eureka: A Prose Poem.

Prose poetry

Prose poetry is a hybrid genre that shows attributes of both prose and poetry. It may be
indistinguishable from the micro-story (a.k.a. the "short short story", "flash fiction"). 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. Since the late 1980s especially, prose poetry has
gained increasing popularity, with entire journals, such as The Prose Poem: An International Journal,
Contemporary Haibun Online, and Haibun Today devoted to that genre and its hybrids. Latin American
poets of the 20th century who wrote prose poems include Octavio Paz and Giannina Braschi.
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, and often feature word play, including puns,
adventurous rhyme and heavy alliteration. Although a few free verse poets have excelled at light verse
outside the formal verse tradition, light verse in English usually obeys at least some formal conventions.
Common forms include the limerick, the clerihew, and the double dactyl.

While light poetry is sometimes condemned as doggerel, or thought of as poetry composed casually,
humor often makes a serious point in a subtle or subversive way. Many of the most renowned "serious"
poets have also excelled at light verse. Notable writers of light poetry include Lewis Carroll, Ogden Nash,
X. J. Kennedy, Willard R. Espy, and Wendy Cope.

Slam poetry

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

Slam performers comment emotively, aloud before an audience, on personal, social, or other matters.
Slam focuses on the aesthetics of word play, intonation, and voice inflection. Slam poetry is often
competitive, at dedicated "poetry slam" contests.

Common subjects in poetry include:

emotions (especially love)

religion

nationalism (including military inspiration and national epics)

philosophy (notably death)

the arts (especially (and especially self-reflectively) poetry)

Less conventional fields of interest for poets includes business