Outline of poetry

The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to poetry:

What type of thing is poetry? Poetry can be described as all of the following things:

One of the arts – as an art form, poetry is an outlet of human expression, that is usually influenced by culture and which in turn helps to change culture. Poetry is a physical manifestation of the internal human creative impulse. A form of literature – literature is composition, that is, written or oral work such as books, stories, and poems. Fine art – in Western European academic traditions, fine art is art developed primarily for aesthetics, distinguishing it from applied art that also has to serve some practical function. The word "fine" here does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question, but the purity of the discipline according to traditional Western European canons.

Types of poetry

Common poetic forms

Epic – lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Milman Parry and Albert Lord have argued that the Homeric epics, the earliest works of Western literature, were fundamentally an oral poetic form. These works form the basis of the epic genre in Western literature. Sonnet – poetic form which originated in Italy; Giacomo da Lentini is credited with its invention. Jintishi – literally "Modern Poetry", was actually composed from the 5th century onwards and is considered to have been fully developed by the early Tang dynasty. The works were principally written in five- and seven-character lines and involve constrained tone patterns, intended to balance the four tones of Middle Chinese within each couplet. Villanelle – nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of a fixed versed form. Tanka – a classical Japanese poem, composed in Japanese (rather than Chinese, as with kanshi) Ode – a poem written in praise of a person (e.g. Psyche), thing (e.g. a Grecian urn), or event Ghazal – an Arabic poetic form with rhyming couplets and a refrain, each line in the same meter Haiku – a poem, normally in Japanese but also in other languages (particularly English), normally with 17 syllables arranged as 5 + 7 + 5 Free verse - an open form of poetry which does not use consistent meter patterns or rhyme, tending to follow the rhythm of natural speech

Periods, styles and movements

Augustan poetry – poetry written during the reign of Caesar Augustus as Emperor of Rome, particularly Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Automatic poetry – Surrealist poetry written using the automatic method. Black Mountain – postmodern American poetry written in the mid-20th century, in Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Chanson de geste Classical Chinese poetry Concrete poetry Cowboy poetry Digital poetry Epitaph Fable Found poetry Haptic poetry Imagism Libel Limerick poetry Lyric poetry Metaphysical poetry Medieval poetry Microstory Minnesinger Modern Chinese poetry Modernist poetry The Movement Narrative poetry Objectivist Occasional poetry Odes and elegies Parable Parnassian Pastoral Performance poetry Post-modernist Prose poetry Romanticism San Francisco Renaissance Sound poetry Symbolism Troubadour Trouvère Visual poetry

History of poetry

History of poetry – the earliest poetry is believed to have been recited or sung, such as in the form of hymns (such as the work of Sumerian priestess Enheduanna), and employed as a way of remembering oral history, genealogy, and law. Many of the poems surviving from the ancient world are recorded prayers, or stories about religious subject matter, but they also include historical accounts, instructions for everyday activities, love songs, and fiction. List of years in poetry

Elements of poetry

Accents Caesura Couplets – a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter. While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. Elision Foot Intonation Meter Mora Prosody Rhythm Scansion Stanza Syllable

Methods of creating rhythm

Scanning meter

spondee – two stressed syllables together iamb – 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

The number of metrical feet in a line are described in Greek terminology as follows: dimeter – two feet trimeter – three feet tetrameter – four feet pentameter – five feet hexameter – six feet heptameter – seven feet octameter – eight feet

Common metrical patterns

Iambic pentameter Example: Paradise Lost,Two versions of Paradise Lost are freely available on-line from Project Guttenberg, Project Gutenberg text version 1 and Project Gutenberg text version 2 by John Milton Dactylic hexameter Examples: Iliad,The original text, as translated by Samuel Butler, is available at Wikisource.s:The Iliad by Homer The Metamorphoses, by Ovid Iambic tetrameter Examples: To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell Eugene Onegin,The full text is available online both in Russian and as translated into English by Charles Johnston. Please see the pages on Eugene Onegin and on Nabokov's 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. by Aleksandr Pushkin Trochaic octameter Example: The Raven,The full text of "The Raven" is available at Wikisource s:The Raven (Poe) by Edgar Allan Poe Anapestic tetrameter Examples: The Hunting of the Snark,The full text of "The Hunting of the Snark" is available at Wikisource.s:The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll Don Juan,The full text of Don Juan is available on-line by Lord Byron Alexandrine – also known as iambic hexameter. Example: Phèdre,See the Text of the play in French as well as an English translation, by Jean Racine

Rhyme, alliteration and assonance Alliteration Alliterative verse Assonance Consonance Internal rhyme Rhyme

Rhyming schemes

Chant royal Ottava rima Rubaiyat

Stanzas and verse paragraphs

2-line stanza: couplet or distich 3-line stanza: triplet or tercet 4-line stanza: quatrain 5-line stanza: quintain or cinquain) 6-line stanza: sestet 8-line stanza: octet verse paragraph

Poetic diction

Poetics

Some famous poets and their poems

Anna Akhmatova Requiem Maya Angelou On the Pulse of Morning Ludovico Ariosto Orlando Furioso W. H. Auden Musée des Beaux Arts September 1, 1939 Matsuo Bashō Natsu no Tsuki (Summer Moon) Charles Baudelaire Les Fleurs du Mal William Blake The Chimney Sweeper The Sick Rose London Geoffrey Chaucer The Complaint of Mars Samuel Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Dante Divine Comedy Kamala Das The Descendants Emily Dickinson "Hope" is the thing with feathers "Why do I love" You, Sir "Faith" is a fine invention John Donne Devotions upon Emergent Occasions Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed Rita Dove Thomas and Beulah (collection) John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel Mac Flecknoe T. S. Eliot The Waste Land Ferdowsi Shahnameh Robert Frost The Road Not Taken Nothing Gold Can Stay Mirza Ghalib Goethe Homer Iliad Odyssey Gerard Manley Hopkins Binsey Poplars Horace Epistles (collection) Victor Hugo Les Contemplations Alfred Edward Housman To An Athlete Dying Young Omar Khayyám Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Translated Collection) John Keats Sleep and Poetry Jan Kochanowski Laments (Translated Collection) Ignacy Krasicki Fables and Parables Jean de La Fontaine Mikhail Lermontov Boyarin Orsha Li Bai Quiet Night Thought Stéphane Mallarmé L'après-midi d'un faune W.S. Merwin Czesław Miłosz John Milton Paradise Lost Pablo Neruda Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Collection) Ovid Ars Amatoria (Collection) Petrarch Il Canzoniere (Collection) Sylvia Plath Lady Lazarus Edgar Allan Poe The Raven Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock Ezra Pound The Cantos Alexander Pushkin Ruslan and Ludmila Rainer Maria Rilke Duino Elegies Arthur Rimbaud Le Bateau ivre (The Drunken Boat) Jalal ad-Din Rumi Masnavi William Shakespeare Shakespeare's sonnets Shel Silverstein Where the Sidewalk Ends (Collection) Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene Philip Sidney The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia Tasso Jerusalem Delivered Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson Break, Break, Break The Charge of the Light Brigade Tears, Idle Tears François Villon Virgil Aeneid Derek Walcott Omeros Walt Whitman Song of Myself Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking William Wordsworth The Prelude William Butler Yeats Sailing to Byzantium Swift's Epitaph (Translation)

Outline of poetry

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