Poetry

Poetry (ancient Greek: ????? (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.

Poetry and form

Compared with prose, poetry depends less on the linguistic units of sentences and paragraphs, and more on units of organisation that are purely poetic. The typical structural elements are the line, couplet, strophe, stanza, and verse paragraph.

Related Topics:
Line - Couplet - Strophe - Stanza - Verse paragraph

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Lines may be self-contained units of sense, as in the well-known lines from William Shakespeare's Hamlet:

Related Topics:
William Shakespeare - Hamlet

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:To be, or not to be: that is the question.

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Alternatively a line may end in mid-phrase or sentence:

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:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

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this linguistic unit is completed in the next line,

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:The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

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This technique is called enjambment, and is used to create a sense of expectation in the reader and/or to add a dynamic to the movement of the verse.

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In many instances, the effectiveness of a poem derives from the tension between the use of linguistic and formal units.

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With the advent of printing, poets gained greater control over the visual presentation of their work. As a result, the use of these formal elements, and of the white space they help create, became an important part of the poet's toolbox. Modernist poetry tends to take this to an extreme, with the placement of individual lines or groups of lines on the page forming an integral part of the poem's composition. In its most extreme form, this leads to the writing of concrete poetry.

Related Topics:
Modernist - Concrete poetry

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