Poetry: An Introduction

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Poetry is a form of literature, written or spoken, that accentuates rhythm, other convoluted patterns of imagery and sound, and the other possible ways that words can suggest meaning.

The word poetry itself derives its meaning from a Greek word, poesis, meaning “creating” or “making.” While ordinary speech and writing, that we call prose, are structured in sentences and paragraphs, poetry is composed in lines as well as in sentences, in stanzas.

The oldest genres for categorizing poetry are epic, lyric, a long narrative poem often centered around a national hero, and a short poem conveying intense emotion.

With a course of the time, new kinds of poetry composition developed to create greater possibilities of expression. In the 20th century, poets have ever more used the language of everyday speech and created new forms ignoring the usual rules of poetry.

Much poetry is available in written form, and at its deepest level, poetry attempts to convey unspeakable sides of human experience.

Poets all through the ages have defined their art in their own ways. A French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, at the end of the 19th century, wrote that “Poetry is the purification of the language of the tribe”. For Hegel, poetry was “the universal realization of the art of the mind.”