What is poetry?<\/p>\n
Poetry<\/strong> tends consist of language arranged into different forms of verse, with features like line\/stanza division, rhythmic metre, and rhyme; however, many poems, both historical and contemporary, may not follow any such structure. Poetry is ultimately an ancient and widespread literary phenomenon, present across many cultures throughout time, and it is not mutually exclusive of the other main classifications of literature \u2013 many renowned plays consist entirely of verse, and it may occur within certain prose genres too. Broadly, it may be divided into the Classical forms of:<\/p>\n –Lyric<\/strong> \u2013 This involves the expression of thoughts and emotions, and characterises the vast majority of poems.<\/p>\n –Epic<\/strong> \u2013 These poems chiefly consist of lengthy narratives, such as in the Ancient Greek Iliad<\/em> and Odyssey<\/em>, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh<\/em>, and the Old English Beowulf<\/em>. Modern examples are not especially numerous, due to a preference for prose in constructing such narratives, and they tend to follow looser structural conventions than their predecessors.<\/p>\n –Dramatic<\/strong> \u2013 This contains a character\u2019s delivery of speech, such as in the aforementioned verse drama; standalone poems may also be dramatic monologues<\/strong> to a stated or implied listener, such as Alfred Tennyson\u2019s Ulysses<\/em>.<\/p>\n There are many further subdivisions of poetry, mostly based on differences in their structure, including blank verse<\/strong>, ballads<\/strong>, sonnets<\/strong>, haikus<\/strong>, limericks<\/strong> and clerihews<\/strong>, or by their absence of structure as in the case of free verse<\/strong>.<\/p>\n A definitional discussion of poetry and various forms of it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2921,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nReferences<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"