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Poetry

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Literature types; Poetry
& Opera

   The Chinese poem "Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain" by Emperor Gaozong
   (Song Dynasty)
   Enlarge
   The Chinese poem "Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain" by Emperor Gaozong (
   Song Dynasty)

   Poetry (from the Greek ποίησις, poiesis, "making" or "creating") is a
   form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in
   addition to, or in lieu of, its of resonance may exist, between
   individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.

   Some forms of poetry are specific to particular cultures and genres,
   responding to the characteristics of the language in which the poet
   writes. While readers accustomed to identifying poetry with
   Shakespeare, Dante and Goethe may think of poetry as being written in
   rhyming lines and regular meter, there are other traditions, such as
   those of Du Fu and Beowulf, which use other approaches to achieve
   rhythm and euphony. In today's globalized world, poets often borrow
   styles, techniques and forms from different cultures and languages.

Poetics and history

   The Deluge tablet of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian, circa 2nd
   millennium BC.
   Enlarge
   The Deluge tablet of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian, circa 2nd
   millennium BC.

   Poetry as an art form may predate literacy Poetry appears among the
   earliest records of most literate cultures, with poetic fragments found
   on early monoliths, rune stones and stelae.

   The oldest surviving poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the 3rd
   millennium BC in Sumer (in Iraq/Mesopotamia), which was written in
   cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, papyrus. The Epic of
   Gilgamesh is based on the historical king Gilgamesh. The oldest love
   poem, found on a clay tablet now known as Istanbul #2461, was also a
   Sumerian poem. It was recited by a bride of the Sumerian king Shu-Sin,
   who ruled from 2037-2029 BC. The oldest epic poetry besides the Epic of
   Gilgamesh are the Greek epics Iliad and Odyssey and the Indian epics
   Ramayana and Mahabharata. The longest epic poems ever written were the
   Tibetan Epic of King Gesar and the Mahabharata.

   Ancient thinkers sought to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a
   form and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulting in the
   development of " poetics", or the study of the aesthetics of poetry.
   Some ancient societies, such as the Chinese through the Shi Jing, one
   of the Five Classics of Confucianism, developed canons of poetic works
   that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance. More recently,
   thinkers struggled to find a definition that could encompass formal
   differences as great as those between Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
   and Matsuo Bashō's Oku no Hosomichi, as well as differences in context
   that span from the religious poetry of the Tanakh to love poetry to
   rap.

   Context can be critical to poetics and to the development of poetic
   genres and forms. For example, poetry employed to record historical
   events in epics, such as Gilgamesh or Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, will
   necessarily be lengthy and narrative, while poetry used for liturgical
   purposes in hymns, psalms, suras and hadiths is likely to have an
   inspirational tone, whereas elegies and tragedy are intended to invoke
   deep internal emotional responses. Other contexts include music such as
   Gregorian chants, and formal or diplomatic speech political rhetoric
   and invective, light-hearted nursery and nonsense rhymes, and even
   medical texts.

   The Polish historian of aesthetics, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, in a paper
   on "The Concept of Poetry," traces the evolution of what is in fact two
   concepts of poetry. Tatarkiewicz points out that the term is applied to
   two distinct things that, as the poet Paul Valéry observes, "at a
   certain point find union. Poetry [...] is an art based on language. But
   poetry also has a more general meaning [...] that is difficult to
   define because it is less determinate: poetry expresses a certain state
   of mind."

Classical and early modern Western traditions

   Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and
   assess the quality of poetry. Notably, Aristotle's Poetics describes
   the three genres of poetry: the epic, comic, and tragic, and develops
   rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry of each genre, based on
   the underlying purposes of that genre. Later aestheticians identified
   three major genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry and dramatic poetry,
   treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry.
   Aristotle's work was influential throughout the Middle East during the
   Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. Later
   poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry from, and defined it
   in opposition to, prose, which was generally understood as writing with
   a proclivity to logical explication and a linear narrative structure.
   This does not imply that poetry is illogical or lacks narration, but
   rather that poetry is an attempt to render the beautiful or sublime
   without the burden of engaging the logical or narrative thought
   process. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from
   logic, " Negative Capability." This "romantic" approach views form as a
   key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct
   from the underlying notional logic. This approach remained influential
   into the twentieth century. During this period, there was also
   substantially more interaction among the various poetic traditions, in
   part due to the spread of European colonialism and the attendant rise
   in global trade. In addition to a boom in translation, during the
   Romantic period numerous ancient works were rediscovered.

Twentieth-century disputes

   Some 20th-century literary theorists, relying less on the opposition of
   prose and poetry, focused on the poet as simply one who creates using
   language, and poetry as what the poet creates. The underlying concept
   of the poet as creator is not uncommon, and some modernist poets
   essentially do not distinguish between the creation of a poem with
   words, and creative acts in other media such as carpentry. Yet other
   modernists challenge the very attempt to define poetry as misguided, as
   when Archibald MacLeish concludes his ironic poem, " Ars Poetica," with
   the lines: "A poem should not mean / but be."

   Intellectual disputes over the definition of poetry, and over its
   distinction from other genres of literature, have been inextricably
   intertwined with the debate over the role of poetic form. The rejection
   of traditional forms and structures for poetry that began in the first
   half of the twentieth century, coincided with a questioning of the
   purpose and meaning of traditional definitions of poetry and of
   distinctions between poetry and prose. Numerous modernist poets have
   written in non-traditional forms or in what traditionally would have
   been considered prose, although their writing was generally infused
   with poetic diction and often with rhythm and tone established by
   non-metrical means. While there was a substantial formalist reaction
   within the modernist schools to the breakdown of structure, this
   reaction focused as much on the development of new formal structures
   and syntheses as on the revival of older forms and structures.

   More recently, postmodernism has fully embraced MacLeish's concept and
   come to regard boundaries between prose and poetry, and also among
   genres of poetry, as having meaning only as cultural artifacts.
   Postmodernism goes beyond modernism's emphasis on the creative role of
   the poet, to emphasize the role of the reader of a text, and to
   highlight the complex cultural web within which a poem is read. Today,
   throughout the world, poetry often incorporates poetic form and diction
   from other cultures and from the past, further confounding attempts at
   definition and classification that were once sensible within a
   tradition such as the Western canon.

Basic elements

   Bust of Homer, one of the earliest European poets, in the British
   Museum
   Enlarge
   Bust of Homer, one of the earliest European poets, in the British
   Museum

Prosody

   Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm, and intonation of a poem.
   Rhythm and meter, although closely related, should be distinguished.
   Meter is the abstract pattern established for a verse (such as iambic
   pentameter), while rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line
   of poetry. Thus, the meter of a line may be described as being
   "iambic", but a full description of the rhythm would require noting
   where the language causes one to pause or accelerate and how the meter
   interacts with other elements of the language. Prosody also may be used
   more specifically to refer to the scanning of poetic lines to show
   meter.

Methods of creating rhythm

   The methods for creating poetic rhythm vary across languages and
   between poetic traditions. Languages are often described as having
   timing set primarily by accents, syllables, or moras, depending on how
   rhythm is established, though a language can be influenced by multiple
   approaches. Japanese is a mora-timed language. Syllable-timed languages
   include Latin, Catalan, French and Spanish. English, Russian and,
   generally, German are stress-timed languages. Varying intonation also
   affects how rhythm is perceived. Languages also can rely on either
   pitch, such as in Vedic or ancient Greek, or tone. Tonal languages
   include Chinese, Vietnamese, Lithuanian, and most subsaharan languages.

   Metrical rhythm generally involves precise arrangements of stresses or
   syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. In Modern
   English verse the pattern of stresses primarily differentiate feet, so
   rhythm based on meter in Modern English is most often founded on the
   pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (alone or elided). In the
   classical languages, on the other hand, while the metrical units are
   similar, vowel length rather than stresses define the meter. Old
   English poetry used a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of
   syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line.

   The chief device of ancient Hebrew Biblical poetry, including many of
   the psalms, was parallelism, a rhetorical structure in which successive
   lines reflected each other in grammatical structure, sound structure,
   notional content, or all three. Parallelism lent itself to antiphonal
   or call-and-response performance, which could also be reinforced by
   intonation. Thus, Biblical poetry relies much less on metrical feet to
   create rhythm, but instead creates rhythm based on much larger sound
   units of lines, phrases and sentences. Some classical poetry forms,
   such as Venpa of the Tamil language, had rigid grammars (to the point
   that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar) which ensured a
   rhythm. In Chinese poetry, tones as well as stresses create rhythm.
   Classical Chinese poetics identifies four tones: the level tone, rising
   tone, falling tone, and entering tone. Note that other classifications
   may have as many as eight tones for Chinese and six for Vietnamese.

   The formal patterns of meter used developed in Modern English verse to
   create rhythm no longer dominate contemporary English poetry. In the
   case of free verse, rhythm is often organized based on looser units of
   cadence than a regular meter. Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, and
   William Carlos Williams are three notable poets who reject the idea
   that regular accentual meter is critical to English poetry. Jeffers
   experimented with sprung rhythm as an alternative to accentual rhythm.

Scanning meter

   Meters in the Western poetic tradition are customarily grouped
   according to a characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per
   line. For example, " iambic pentameter" is a meter composed of five
   feet per line in which the kind of feet called iambs predominate. The
   origin of this tradition of metrics lies in ancient Greek poetry, and
   poets such as Homer, Pindar, Hesiod, Sappho, and the great tragedians
   of Athens made use of such a metric system.

   Meter is often scanned based on the arrangement of " poetic feet" into
   lines. In English, each foot usually includes one syllable with a
   stress and one or two without a stress. In other languages, it may be a
   combination of the number of syllables and the length of the vowel that
   determines how the foot is parsed. For example, in Greek, one syllable
   with a long unstressed vowel may be treated as the equivalent of two
   syllables with short vowels. In Anglo-Saxon meter, the unit on which
   lines are built is a half-line containing two stresses rather than a
   foot. Scanning meter can often show the basic or fundamental pattern
   underlying a verse, but does not show the varying degrees of stress, as
   well as the differing pitches and lengths of syllables.

   As an example of how a line of meter is defined, in English language
   iambic pentameter, each line has five metrical feet, and each foot is
   an iamb, or an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
   When a particular line is scanned, there may be variations upon the
   basic pattern of the meter; for example, the first foot of English
   iambic pentameters is quite often inverted, meaning that the stress
   falls on the first syllable. The generally accepted names for some of
   the most commonly used kinds of feet include:
   One of Henry Holiday's illustrations from Lewis Carroll's The Hunting
   of the Snark, written predominantly in anapestic tetrameter: "In the
   midst of the word he was trying to say / In the midst of his laughter
   and glee / He had softly and suddenly vanished away / For the snark was
   a boojum, you see."
   Enlarge
   One of Henry Holiday's illustrations from Lewis Carroll's The Hunting
   of the Snark, written predominantly in anapestic tetrameter: "In the
   midst of the word he was trying to say / In the midst of his laughter
   and glee / He had softly and suddenly vanished away / For the snark was
   a boojum, you see."
     * 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

   There are a wide range of names for other types of feet, right up to a
   choriamb of four syllable metric foot with a stressed syllable followed
   by two unstressed syllables and closing with a stressed syllable. The
   choriamb is derived from some ancient Greek and Latin poetry. Languages
   which utilize vowel length or intonation rather than or in addition to
   syllabic accents in determining meter, such as Ottoman Turkish or
   Vedic, often have concepts similar to the iamb and dactyl to describe
   common combinations of long and short sounds.

   Each of these types of feet has a certain "feel," whether alone or in
   combination with other feet. The iamb, for example, is the most natural
   form of rhythm in the English language, and generally produces a subtle
   but stable verse. The dactyl, on the other hand, almost gallops along.
   And, as readers of The Night Before Christmas or Dr. Seuss realize, the
   anapest is perfect for a light-hearted, comic feel.

   There is debate over how useful a multiplicity of different "feet" is
   in describing meter. For example, Robert Pinsky has argued that while
   dactyls are important in classical verse, English dactylic verse uses
   dactyls very irregularly and can be better described based on patterns
   of iambs and anapests, feet which he considers natural to the language.
   Actual rhythm is significantly more complex than the basic scanned
   meter described above, and many scholars have sought to develop systems
   that would scan such complexity. Vladimir Nabokov noted that overlaid
   on top of the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a
   line of verse was a separate pattern of accents resulting from the
   natural pitch of the spoken words, and suggested that the term "scud"
   be used to distinguish an unaccented stress from an accented stress.

Common metrical patterns

   Different traditions and genres of poetry tend to use different meters,
   ranging from the Shakespearian iambic pentameter and the Homerian
   dactylic hexameter to the Anapestic tetrameter used in many nursery
   rhymes. However, a number of variations to the established meter are
   common, both to provide emphasis or attention to a given foot or line
   and to avoid boring repetition. For example, the stress in a foot may
   be inverted, a caesura (or pause) may be added (sometimes in place of a
   foot or stress), or the final foot in a line may be given a feminine
   ending to soften it or be replaced by a spondee to emphasize it and
   create a hard stop. Some patterns (such as iambic pentameter) tend to
   be fairly regular, while other patterns, such as dactylic hexameter,
   tend to be highly irregular. Regularity can vary between language. In
   addition, different patterns often develop distinctively in different
   languages, so that, for example, iambic tetrameter in Russian will
   generally reflect a regularity in the use of accents to reinforce the
   meter, which does not occur or occurs to a much lesser extent in
   English.

   Some common metrical patterns, with notable examples of poets and poems
   who use them, include:
     * Iambic pentameter (John Milton, Paradise Lost)
     * Dactylic hexameter (Homer, Iliad; Ovid, The Metamorphoses)
     * Iambic tetrameter ( Andrew Marvell, " To His Coy Mistress")
     * Iambic tetrameter (Aleksandr Pushkin, Eugene Onegin)
     * Trochaic octameter (Edgar Allan Poe, " The Raven")
     * Anapestic tetrameter ( Lewis Carroll, " The Hunting of the Snark";
       Lord Byron, Don Juan)
     * Alexandrine, also known as iambic hexameter ( Jean Racine, Phèdre)

Rhyme, alliteration and assonance

   The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written in alliterative verse and
   in paragraph form, not separated into lines or stanzas.
   Enlarge
   The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written in alliterative verse and
   in paragraph form, not separated into lines or stanzas.

   Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance are each methods for
   creating repetitive patterns of sound. These methods may be used as an
   independent structural element of a poem, to reinforce rhythmic
   patterns, or as a merely ornamental element of poem. Rhyme consists of
   identical ("hard rhyme") or similar ("soft rhyme") sounds placed at the
   end of lines or at predictable locations within lines (" internal
   rhyme"). Languages vary in the richness of their rhyming structures, so
   that Italian, for example, has a rich rhyming structure where it is
   possible to maintain a limited set of rhymes throughout a lengthy poem.
   The richness results from having word endings which follow regular
   forms. English, with irregular word endings adopted from many other
   languages, is less rich in rhyme. The richness of rhyming structures in
   a language plays a significant role in determining what poetic forms
   are commonly used.

   Alliteration and assonance played a key role in structuring early
   Germanic, Norse and Old English forms of poetry. The alliterative
   patterns of early Germanic poetry interweave meter and alliteration as
   a key part of their structure, so that the metrical pattern determines
   when the listener expects instances of alliteration to occur. This can
   be compared to an ornamental use of alliteration in most Modern
   European poetry, where alliterative patterns are not formal or carried
   through full stanzas. Alliteration is particularly useful in languages
   with less rich rhyming structures. 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. Because verbs carry much of the pitch in the English
   language, assonance can loosely evoke the tonal elements of Chinese
   poetry and so is useful in translating Chinese poetry. Consonance
   occurs where a consonant sound is repeated throughout a sentence
   without putting the sound only at the front of a word. Consonance
   provokes a more subtle effect than alliteration and so is less useful
   as a structural element.

Rhyming schemes

   In many languages, including modern European languages and Arabic,
   poets use rhyme in set patterns as a structural element for specific
   poet forms, such as ballads, sonnets and rhyming couplets. However, the
   use of structural rhyme is not universal even within the European
   tradition. Much modern poetry avoids traditional rhyme schemes.
   Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme. Rhyme entered
   European poetry in the High Middle Ages, in part under the influence of
   the Arabic language in Al Andalus (modern Spain). Arabic language poets
   have always used rhyme extensively, most notably in their long, rhyming
   qasidas. Some rhyming schemes have become associated with a specific
   language, culture or period, while other rhyming schemes have achieved
   use across languages, cultures or time periods. Some forms of poetry
   carry a consistent and well-defined rhyming scheme, such as the chant
   royal or the rubaiyat, while other poetic forms have variable rhyme
   schemes.
   Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven; from Gustave Doré's
   illustrations to the Divine Comedy Paradiso Canto 31
   Enlarge
   Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven; from Gustave Doré's
   illustrations to the Divine Comedy Paradiso Canto 31

   Most rhyme schemes are described using letters that correspond to sets
   of rhymes, so if the first, second and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme
   with each other and the third line does not rhyme, the quatrain is said
   to have an "a-a-b-a" rhyme scheme. This rhyme scheme is the one used,
   for example, in the rubaiyat form. Similarly, an "a-b-b-a" quatrain
   (what is known as " enclosed rhyme") is used in such forms as the
   Petrarchan sonnet. Some types of more complicated rhyming schemes have
   developed names of their own, separate from the "a-b-c" convention,
   such as the ottava rima and terza rima, discussed below. The types and
   use of differing rhyming schemes is discussed further in the main
   article.

   Ottava rima
          The ottava rima is a poem with a stanza of eight lines with an
          alternating a-b rhyming scheme for the first six lines followed
          by a closing couplet first used by Boccaccio. This rhyming
          scheme was developed for heroic epics but has also been used for
          mock-heroic poetry.

   Dante and terza rima

   Dante's Divine Comedy is written in terza rima, where each stanza has
   three lines, with the first and third rhyming, and the second line
   rhyming with the first and third lines of the next stanza (thus, a-b-a
   / b-c-b / c-d-c, etc.) in a chain rhyme. The terza rima provides a
   flowing, progressive sense to the poem, and used skillfully it can
   evoke a sense of motion, both forward and backward. Terza rima is
   appropriately used in lengthy poems in languages with rich rhyming
   schemes (such as Italian, with its many common word endings).

Poetic form

   Poetic form is very much more flexible nowadays than ever before. Many
   modern poets eschew recognisable structures or forms, and write in
   'free verse'. However, major structural elements often used in poetry
   are the line, the stanza or verse paragraph, and larger combinations of
   stanzas or lines such as cantos. The broader visual presentation of
   words and calligraphy can also be utilized. These basic units of poetic
   form are often combined into larger structures, called poetic forms,
   such as the sonnet.

Lines

   Poetry is often separated into lines on a page. 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.

   Lines may be combined into couplets, a combination of two lines which
   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. Lines also may be combined into
   triplets, or sets of three lines. Lines are often grouped into verses
   or stanzas, which often have related couplets or triplets within them.
   Alexander Blok's poem Noch, ulica, fonar, apteka, or Night, street,
   lamp, drugstore, on a wall in Leiden.
   Enlarge
   Alexander Blok's poem Noch, ulica, fonar, apteka, or Night, street,
   lamp, drugstore, on a wall in Leiden.

Stanzas and verse paragraphs

   Related lines of poems are often organized into stanzas, which are
   denominated by the number of lines included. Thus a collection of four
   lines is a quatrain, six lines is a sestet and eight lines is an octet.
   Two lines form a couplet (or distich), three lines a triplet or tercet,
   and five lines a quintain (or cinquain). Other poems may be organized
   into a 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. Many medieval poems were written in verse paragraphs,
   even where regular rhymes and rhythms were used.

   In many forms of poetry, stanzas are interlocking, so that the rhyming
   scheme or other structural elements of one stanza determine those of
   succeeding stanzas. Examples of such interlocking stanzas include, for
   example, the ghazal and the villanelle, where a refrain (or, in the
   case of the villanelle, refrains) is established in the first stanza
   which then repeats in subsequent stanzas. Related to the use of
   interlocking stanzas is their use to separate thematic parts of a poem.
   For example, the strophe, antistrophe and epode of the ode form are
   often separated into one or more stanzas. In such cases, or where
   structures are meant to be highly formal, a stanza will usually form a
   complete thought, consisting of full sentences and cohesive thoughts.

   In some cases, particularly lengthier formal poetry such as some forms
   of epic poetry, stanzas themselves are constructed according to strict
   rules and then combined. In skaldic poetry, the dróttkvætt stanza had
   eight lines, each having three "lifts" produced with alliteration or
   assonance. In addition to two or three alliterations, the odd numbered
   lines had partial rhyme of consonants with dissimilar vowels, not
   necessarily at the beginning of the word; the even lines contained
   internal rhyme in set syllables (not necessarily at the end of the
   word). Each half-line had exactly six syllables, and each line ended in
   a trochee. The arrangement of dróttkvætts followed far less rigid rules
   than the construction of the individual dróttkvætts.
   Qur'an Fragment, Sura 33: 73–74
   Enlarge
   Qur'an Fragment, Sura 33: 73–74

Visual presentation

   Even before the advent of printing, the appearance of written poetry
   often added significant meaning or depth. Acrostic poems included clues
   or meanings in the letters beginning lines or in other specific places
   in a poem. In Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese poetry, the presentation of
   the poems in fine calligraphy has always been an important part of the
   overall artistic and poetic effect for many poems.

   With the advent of printing, poets gained greater control over the mass
   produced visual presentation of their work. As a result, the use of
   visual elements became an important part of the poet's toolbox, and
   many poets have sought to use visual presentation for a wide range of
   purposes. Some Modernist poetry takes 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, whether to complement the
   poem's rhythm through various lengthed visual caesuras, to create
   juxtapositions to accentuate meaning, ambiguity or irony, or simply to
   create an aesthetically pleasing form. In its most extreme form, this
   can lead to concrete poetry or asemic writing.

Poetic diction

   Illustration for the cover of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and
   Other Poems (1862), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Goblin Market used
   complex poetic diction in nursery rhyme form: "We must not look at
   goblin men, / We must not buy their fruits: / Who knows upon what soil
   they fed / Their hungry thirsty roots?"
   Enlarge
   Illustration for the cover of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and
   Other Poems (1862), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Goblin Market used
   complex poetic diction in nursery rhyme form: "We must not look at
   goblin men, / We must not buy their fruits: / Who knows upon what soil
   they fed / Their hungry thirsty roots?"

   Poetic diction describes 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. Many languages and poetic forms have
   very specific poetic dictions, to the point where separate 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. Aristotle wrote in the Poetics that "the greatest
   thing by far is to be a master of metaphor". Since the rise of
   Modernism, some poets have opted for a poetic diction that deemphasizes
   rhetorical devices, attempting the direct presentation of things and
   experiences and the exploration of tone. On the other hand, Surrealists
   have pushed rhetorical devices to their limits, making frequent use of
   catachresis.

   Allegorical stories are central to the poetic diction of many cultures,
   and were prominent in the west during classical times, the late Middle
   Ages and Renaisance. Rather than being fully allegorical, a poem may
   contain symbols or allusion that deepens the meaning or impact of its
   words without constructing a full allegory. Another strong element of
   poetic diction can be the use of vivid imagery for effect. The
   juxtaposition of unexpected or impossible images is, for example, a
   particularly strong element in surrealist poetry and haiku. Vivid
   images are often endowed with symbolism as well.

   Many poetic dictions will use repetitive phrases for effect, either a
   short phrase (such as Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn") or a longer
   refrain. Such repetition can add a somber tone to a poem, as in many
   odes, or can be laced with irony as the context of the words change.
   For example, in Antony's famous eulogy to in Shakespeare's Julius
   Caesar, Anthony's repetition of the words "for Brutus is an honorable
   man" moves from a sincere tone to one that exudes irony.

Common poetic forms

   Historically, very specific and formalized poetic forms have been
   developed by many cultures. In more developed, closed or "received"
   forms, rhyming scheme, meter and other elements of a poem are based on
   sets of rules, ranging from the relatively loose rules that govern the
   construction of an elegy to the highly formalized structure of the
   ghazal or villanelle. Below are described some common forms of poetry
   widely used across several languages. Additional forms of poetry can be
   found in the discussions of poetry of particular cultures or periods or
   in the glossary.

Sonnets

   Among the most common form of poetry through the ages is the sonnet,
   which, by the thirteenth century, was a poem of fourteen lines
   following a strict rhyme scheme and logical structure. The conventions
   associated with the sonnet have changed during its history, and so
   there are several different sonnet forms. Traditionally, English poets
   use iambic pentameter when writing sonnets, with the Spenserian and
   Shakespearean sonnets being especially notable. In the Romance
   languages, the hendecasyllable and Alexandrines are the most widely
   used meters, although the Petrarchan sonnet has been used in Italy
   since the 14th century. Sonnets are particularly associated with love
   poetry, and often use a poetic diction heavily based on vivid imagery,
   but the twists and turns associated with the move from octave to sestet
   and to final couplet make them a useful and dynamic form for many
   subjects. Shakespeare's sonnets are among the most famous in English
   poetry, with 20 being included in the Oxford Book of English Verse.

Jintishi

   The jintishi (近體詩) is a Chinese poetic form based on a series of set
   tonal patterns using the four tones of the classical Chinese language
   in each couplet: the level, rising, falling and entering tones. The
   basic form of the jintishi has eight lines in four couplets, with
   parallelism between the lines in the second and third couplets. The
   couplets with parallel lines contain contrasting content but an
   identical grammatical relationship between words. Jintishi often have a
   rich poetic diction, full of allusion, and can have a wide range of
   subject, including history and politics. One of the masters of the form
   was Du Fu, who wrote during the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century. There
   are several variations on the basic form of the jintishi.

Villanelle

   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. The villanelle has
   been used regularly in the English language since the late nineteenth
   century by such poets as Dylan Thomas, W.H. Auden, and Elizabeth
   Bishop. It is a form that has gained heavier use at a time when the use
   of received forms of poetry has generally been declining.

Tanka

   The Tanka is a form of Japanese poetry, generally not possessing rhyme,
   with five lines structured in a 5-7-5 7-7 patterns. The 5-7-5 phrase
   (the "upper phrase") and the 7-7 phrase (the "lower phrase") generally
   show a shift in tone and subject matter. Tanka were written as early as
   the Nara period by such poets as Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, at a time when
   Japan was emerging from a period where much of its poetry followed
   Chinese form. Tanka was originally the shorter form of Japanese formal
   poetry, and was used more heavily to explore personal rather than
   public themes. It thus had a more informal poetic diction. By the 13th
   century, Tanka had become the dominant form of Japanese poetry, and it
   is still widely written today.

Ode

   Odes were first developed by poets writing in ancient Greek, such as
   Pindar, and Latin, such as Horace, and forms of odes appear in many of
   the cultures influenced by the Greeks and Latins. 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 general dealing 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
   resemble the ode is the qasida in Persian poetry.

Ghazal

   The ghazal (Arabic: غزل) is a form of poetry common in Arabic, Persian,
   Urdu and Bengali poetry among others. In classic form, the ghazal has
   from five to fifteen rhyming couplets that share a refrain at the end
   of the second line (which need be of only a few syllables). Each line
   has an identical meter, and there is a set pattern of rhymes in the
   first couplet and among the refrains. Each couplet forms a complete
   thought and stands alone, and the overall ghazal often reflects on a
   theme of unattainable love or divinity. The last couplet generally
   includes the signature of the author. Like other forms with a long
   history in many languages, many variations have been developed,
   including forms with a quasi-musical poetic diction in Urdu. Ghazals
   have a classical affinity with Sufism, and a number of major Sufi
   religious works are written in ghazal form. The relatively steady meter
   and the use of the refrain produce an incantatory effect, which
   complements Sufi mystical themes well. Among the masters of the form is
   the Persian poet Rumi.

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