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.