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Defining Poetry, Poetic Subgenres and Kinds Two Definitions 1. Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Merriam-Webster) 2. Composition in verse or some comparable patterned arrangement of language in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm[. . .] . Traditionally associated with explicit formal departure from the patterns of ordinary speech or prose, e.g., in the use of elevated diction, fi gurative language, and syntactical reordering. (The Oxford English Dictionary) Four Common Elements 1) the “patterned arrangement of language” to 2) generate “rhythm” and thereby both 3) express and evoke specific “emotion[s]” or “feelings” in 4) a “concentrated” way, or with “intensity.” POETIC SUBGENRES AND KINDS Three broad categories or subgenres: narrative, dramatic, or lyric Narrative Poetry a narrative poem tells a story. many different kinds of narrative poems, including book-length epics like Homer’s Iliad; chivalric romances like Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur; grisly murder ballads, often rooted in actual events. Dramatic Poetry “Dramatic poetry” thus meant and still can mean actual plays in verse (or verse drama). But any poem that consists wholly of dialogue among characters, unmediated by a narrator, counts as a dramatic poem. Lyric Poetry The word lyric derives from the ancient Greeks, for whom it designated a short poem chanted or sung by a single singer to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument called a lyre. Scholars believe that the earliest “lyrics”in the Greek sense were likely associated with religious occasions and feelings, especially those related to celebration, praise, and mourning. Ever since, the lyric has been associated with brevity, musicality, a single speaker, and the expression of intense feeling. Everyone agrees that relatively short poems that focus primarily on the feelings, impressions, and thoughts—that is, on the subjective, inward experience—of a single first-person speaker are lyrics.
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