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Poetry
Poetry (from the Greek "ποίησις", poiesis, a "making" or "creating") is a
form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative
qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. Poetry may
be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction
with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns or lyrics.
Poetry, and discussions of it, have a long history. Early attempts to define
poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in
rhetoric, drama, song and comedy.[1] Later attempts concentrated on features
such as repetition and rhyme, and emphasised the aesthetics which
distinguish poetry from prose.[2] From the mid-20th century, poetry has
sometimes been more loosely defined as a fundamental creative act using
language.[3]
Poetry often uses particular forms and conventions to expand the literal
meaning of the words, or to evoke emotional or sensual responses. Devices
such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used
to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poetry's use of ambiguity,
symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves
a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, metaphor and simile
create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of
meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms 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 Dante, Goethe,
Mickiewicz and Rumi may think of it as being written in rhyming lines and
regular meter, there are traditions, such as those of Du Fu and Beowulf,
that use other approaches to achieve rhythm and euphony. In today's
globalized world, poets often borrow styles, techniques and forms from
diverse cultures and languages.
History
Poetry as an art form may predate literacy.[4] Many ancient works, from the
Vedas (1700–1200 BC) to the Odyssey (800–675 BC), appear to have been
composed in poetic form to aid memorization and oral transmission, in
prehistoric and ancient societies.[5] 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 Mesopotamia, now Iraq), which was written in cuneiform
script on clay tablets and, later, papyrus.[6] Other ancient epic poetry
includes the Greek epics, Iliad and Odyssey, and the Indian epics, Ramayana
and Mahabharata.
The efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive
as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in
"poetics" — 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 have struggled to find a
definition that could encompass formal differences as great as those between
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Matsuo Bashō's Oku no Hosomichi, as well as
differences in context spanning Tanakh religious poetry, love poetry, and
rap.[7]
Context can be critical to poetics and to the development of poetic genres
and forms. Poetry that records historic events in epics, such as Gilgamesh
or Ferdowsi's Shahnameh,[8] will necessarily be lengthy and narrative, while
poetry used for liturgical purposes (hymns, psalms, suras and hadiths) is
likely to have an inspirational tone, whereas elegy and tragedy are meant to
evoke deep emotional responses. Other contexts include Gregorian chants,
formal or diplomatic speech,[9] political rhetoric and invective,[10]
light-hearted nursery and nonsense rhymes, and even medical texts.[11]
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." ."[12]
Western traditions
Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the
quality of poetry. Notably, the existing fragments of Aristotle's Poetics
describe three genres of poetry — the epic, the comic, and the tragic — and
develop rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry in each genre, based
on the underlying purposes of the genre.[13] 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,[14] as well as in Europe during the Renaissance.[15]
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.[16]
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."[17] 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.[18] Yet other modernists challenge the very
attempt to define poetry as misguided, as when Archibald MacLeish concludes
his paradoxical poem, "Ars Poetica," with the lines: "A poem should not mean
/ but be."[19]
Disputes over the definition of poetry, and over poetry's 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,
particularly given examples of poetic prose and prosaic "poetry". 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.[20] 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.[21]
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.[22] 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
Prosody
Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm, and intonation of a poem. Rhythm
and meter, although closely related, should be distinguished.[23] Meter is
the definitive 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.
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.[24]
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.[25]
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.[26]
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.[27] 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.[28] Jeffers experimented with sprung
rhythm as an alternative to accentual rhythm.[29]
Meter
In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to
a characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per line. Thus,
"iambic pentameter" is a meter comprising five feet per line, in which the
predominant kind of foot is the "iamb." This metric system originated in
ancient Greek poetry, and was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho, and
by the great tragedians of Athens.
Meter is often scanned based on the arrangement of "poetic feet" into
lines.[30] 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, where one syllable with a long vowel may be treated as
the equivalent of two syllables with short vowels. For example, in ancient
Greek poetry, meter is based solely on syllable duration rather than stress.
In some languages, such as English, stressed syllables are typically
pronounced with greater volume, greater length, and higher pitch, and are
the basis for poetic meter. In ancient Greek, these attributes were
independent of each other; long vowels and syllables including a vowel plus
more than one consonant actually had longer duration, approximately double
that of a short vowel, while pitch and stress (dictated by the accent) were
not associated with duration and played no role in the meter. Thus, a
dactylic hexameter line could be envisioned as a musical phrase with six
measures, each of which contained either a half note followed by two quarter
notes (i.e. a long syllable followed by two short syllables), or two half
notes (i.e. two long syllables); thus, the substitution of two short
syllables for one long syllable resulted in a measure of the same length.
Such substitution in a stress language, such as English, would not result in
the same rhythmic regularity. In Anglo-Saxon meter, the unit on which lines
are built is a half-line containing two stresses rather than a foot.[31]
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.[32]
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.[33] The
generally accepted names for some of the most commonly used kinds of feet
include:
One of Henry Holiday's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the
Snark, which is 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."
One of Henry Holiday's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the
Snark, which is 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.[34] 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.[35]
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.[36] 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.[37]
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.[38]
Some common metrical patterns, with notable examples of poets and poems who
use them, include:
* Iambic pentameter (John Milton, Paradise Lost[39])
* Dactylic hexameter (Homer, Iliad;[40] Ovid, The Metamorphoses)
* Iambic tetrameter (Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")
* Iambic tetrameter (Aleksandr Pushkin, Eugene Onegin)[41]
* Trochaic octameter (Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven")[42]
* Anapestic tetrameter (Lewis Carroll, "The Hunting of the Snark";[43] Lord
Byron, Don Juan)[44]
* Alexandrine, also known as iambic hexameter (Jean Racine, Phčdre)[45]
Rhyme, alliteration, assonance
Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance are ways of creating
repetitive patterns of sound. They may be used as an independent structural
element in a poem, to reinforce rhythmic patterns, or as an ornamental
element.[46]
Rhyme consists of identical ("hard-rhyme") or similar ("soft-rhyme") sounds
placed at the ends of lines or at predictable locations within lines
("internal rhyme").[47] Languages vary in the richness of their rhyming
structures; Italian, for example, has a rich rhyming structure permitting
maintenance of a limited set of rhymes throughout a lengthy poem. The
richness results from word endings that follow regular forms. English, with
its irregular word endings adopted from other languages, is less rich in
rhyme.[48] The degree of richness of a language's rhyming structures plays a
substantial role in determining what poetic forms are commonly used in that
language.
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.[49] 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).[50] Arabic language poets used rhyme extensively from the first
development of literary Arabic in the sixth century, as 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.
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.[51] Similarly, an "a-b-b-a" quatrain (what is known as
"enclosed rhyme") is used in such forms as the Petrarchan sonnet.[52] 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.
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[53] 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).[54]
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 or poetic modes, such
as in the sonnet or haiku.
Lines and stanzas
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 of poems are often organized into stanzas, which are denominated by
the number of lines included. Thus a collection of two lines is a couplet
(or distich), three lines a triplet (or tercet), four lines a quatrain, five
lines a quintain (or cinquain), six lines a sestet, and eight lines an
octet. These lines 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. Stanzas often have related
couplets or triplets within them.
Alexander Blok's poem, "Noch, ulitsa, fonar, apteka" ("Night, street, lamp,
drugstore"), on a wall in Leiden.
Alexander Blok's poem, "Noch, ulitsa, fonar, apteka" ("Night, street, lamp,
drugstore"), on a wall in Leiden.
Other poems may be organized into 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 dróttkvćtt 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 dróttkvćtts
followed far less rigid rules than the construction of the individual
dróttkvćtts.
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
lengthened visual caesuras, to create juxtapositions to accentuate meaning,
ambiguity or irony, or simply to create an aesthetically pleasing form.[55]
In its most extreme form, this can lead to concrete poetry or asemic
writing.[56]
Poetic diction
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.[57]
Aristotle wrote in the Poetics that "the greatest thing by far is to be a
master of metaphor".[58] 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.[59] 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 contexts 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.[60]
Poetic forms
Specific poetic forms have been developed by many cultures. In more
developed, closed or "received" poetic forms, the 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. Described below are
some common forms of poetry widely used across a number of languages.
Additional forms of poetry may be found in the discussions of poetry of
particular cultures or periods and 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 set
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.[61]
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 (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,[62] W.H. Auden,[63] and Elizabeth Bishop.[64] 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,[65] and Latin, such as Horace, and forms of odes appear in many of
the cultures influenced by the Greeks and Latins.[66] 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 generally deal
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 resembles the ode is the qasida in Persian poetry.
Ghazal
The ghazal (Persian/Urdu/Arabic: غزل) is a form of poetry common in Arabic,
Persian, Urdu and Bengali poetry. 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.
As with 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 Rumi, a Persian
poet who lived in Turkey.
Poetic genres
In addition to specific forms of poems, poetry is often thought of in terms
of different genres and subgenres. A poetic genre is generally a tradition
or classification of poetry based on the subject matter, style, or other
broader literary characteristics.[67] Some commentators view genres as
natural forms of literature.[68] Others view the study of genres as the
study of how different works relate and refer to other works.[69]
Epic poems are one commonly identified genre, often defined as lengthy poems
focused on an action-based narrative. Lyric poetry, which tends to be
shorter, melodic, and contemplative, is another commonly identified genre.
Some commentators may organize bodies of poetry into further subgenres, and
individual poems may be seen as a part of many different genres.[70] In many
cases, poetic genres show common features as a result of a common tradition,
even across cultures. Thus, Greek lyric poetry influenced the genre's
development from India to Europe.
Described below are some common genres, but the classification of genres,
the description of their characteristics, and even the reasons for
undertaking a classification into genres can take many forms.
Narrative poetry
Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that tells a story. Broadly it
subsumes epic poetry, but the term "narrative poetry" is often reserved for
smaller works, generally with more direct appeal than the epic to human
interest.
Narrative poetry may be the oldest genre of poetry. Many scholars of Homer
have concluded that his Iliad and Odyssey were composed from compilations of
shorter narrative poems that related individual episodes and were more
suitable for an evening's entertainment. Much narrative poetry — such as
Scots and English ballads, and Baltic and Slavic heroic poems — is
performance poetry with roots in a preliterate oral tradition. It has been
speculated that some features that distinguish poetry from prose, such as
meter, alliteration and kennings, once served as memory aids for bards who
recited traditional tales.
Notable narrative poets have included Ovid, Dante, Chaucer, William
Langland, Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, Adam Mickiewicz,
Alexander Pushkin, Tennyson and Poe.
Epic poetry
Epic poetry is a genre of poetry, and a major form of narrative literature.
It recounts, in a continuous narrative, the life and works of a heroic or
mythological person or group of persons. Western epic poems include Homer's
Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil's Aeneid and the Nibelungenlied. Eastern examples
are the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata, Valmiki's Ramayana, Ferdowsi's
Shahnama, and the Epic of King Gesar.
The composition of epic poetry, and of long poems generally, became uncommon
in the west after the early 20th century, while the meaning of the term
"epic" evolved to refer also to prose writings, films and similar works that
are characterized by great length, multiple settings, large numbers of
characters, or long span of time involved.
Dramatic poetry
Dramatic poetry is drama written in verse to be spoken or sung, and appears
in varying and sometimes related forms in many cultures. Greek tragedy,
written in verse, widely influenced the development of both Western and
Sanskrit drama, while dramatic verse in East Asia developed out of Chinese
Opera and includes the Noh form in Japan.
Practical reasons to write drama in verse include ease of memorization and
musical accompaniment. In the latter half of the 20th century, verse drama
fell almost completely out of favor with English-language dramatists.
Christopher Fry and T.S. Eliot may have been its last practitioners in that
language.
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre that, unlike epic poetry and dramatic poetry, does
not attempt to tell a story but instead is of a more personal nature. Rather
than depicting characters and actions, it portrays the poet's own feelings,
states of mind, and perceptions. While the genre's name, derived from
"lyre," implies that it is intended to be sung, much lyric poetry is meant
purely for reading.
Though lyric poetry has long celebrated love, many courtly-love visit
http://love-poems-international.com poets also wrote lyric poems about war
and peace, nature and nostalgia, grief and loss. Notable among these are the
15th-century French lyric poets, Christine de Pizan and Charles, Duke of
Orléans. http://love-poems-international.com Spiritual and religious themes
were addressed by such medieval lyric poets as St. John of the Cross and
Teresa of Ávila. The tradition of lyric poetry based on spiritual experience
was continued by later poets such as John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins and
T.S. Eliot.
Although the most popular form for western lyric poetry to take may be the
14-line sonnet, as practiced by Petrarch and Shakespeare, lyric poetry shows
a bewildering variety of forms, including increasingly, in the 20th century,
unrhymed ones.
Verse fable
The fable is an ancient and near-ubiquitous literary genre, often (though
not invariably) set in verse form. It is a brief, succinct story that
features anthropomorphized animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of
nature that illustrate a moral lesson (a "moral"). Verse fables have used a
variety of meter and rhyme patterns; Ignacy Krasicki, for example, in his
Fables and Parables, used 13-syllable lines in rhyming couplets.
Notable verse fabulists have included Aesop (mid-6th century BCE), Vishnu
Sarma (ca. 200 BCE), Phaedrus (15 BCE–50 CE), Marie de France (12th
century), Biernat of Lublin (1465?–after 1529), Jean de La Fontaine
(1621–95), Ignacy Krasicki (1735–1801), Ivan Krylov (1769–1844) and Ambrose
Bierce (1842–1914). All of Aesop's translators and successors have owed a
fundamental debt to that semi-legendary fabulist.
Prose poetry
Prose poetry is a hybrid genre that demonstrates attributes of both prose
and poetry. It may be indistinguishable from the micro-story (aka the "short
short story," "flash fiction"). Most critics argue that it qualifies as
poetry because of its conciseness, use of metaphor, and special attention to
language.
While some examples of earlier prose strike modern readers as poetic, prose
poetry is commonly regarded as having originated in 19th century France,
where its practitioners included Aloysius Bertrand, Charles Baudelaire,
Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé.
The genre has subsequently found notable exemplars in French (Francis Ponge);
English (Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, Allen
Ginsberg, Russell Edson, Charles Simic, Robert Bly, James Wright); Spanish (Octavio
Paz, Ángel Crespo); Polish (Bolesław Prus); Russian; and Japanese.
Since the late 1980s especially, prose poetry has gained increasing
popularity, with journals devoted solely to that genre.
Notes
1. ^ Heath, Malcolm (ed). Aristotle's Poetics. London, England: Penguin
Books, (1997), ISBN 0140446362.
2. ^ See, for example, Immanauel Kant (J.H. Bernhard, Trans). Critique of
Judgment. Dover (2005).
3. ^ Dylan Thomas. Quite Early One Morning. New York, New York: New
Direction Books, reset edition (1968), ISBN 0811202089.
4. ^ Many scholars, particularly those researching the Homeric tradition and
the oral epics of the Balkans, suggest that early writing shows clear traces
of older oral poetic traditions, including the use of repeated phrases as
building blocks in larger poetic units. A rhythmic and repetitious form
would make a long story easier to remember and retell, before writing was
available as an aide-memoire.
5. ^ For one recent summary discussion, see Frederick Ahl and Hannah M.
Roisman. The Odyssey Re-Formed. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press,
(1996), at 1–26, ISBN 0801483352. Others suggest that poetry did not
necessarily predate writing. See, for example, Jack Goody. The Interface
Between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press, (1987), at 98, ISBN 0521337941.
6. ^ N.K. Sanders (Trans.). The Epic of Gilgamesh. London, England: Penguin
Books, revised edition (1972), at 7–8.
7. ^ See, e.g., Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The Message, Sugar
Hill, (1982).
8. ^ Abolqasem Ferdowsi (Dick Davis, Trans.). Shahnameh: The Persian Book of
Kings. New York, New York: Viking, (2006), ISBN 0-670-03485-1.
9. ^ For example, in the Arabic world, much diplomacy was carried out
through poetic form in the 16th century. See Natalie Zemon Davis.
Trickster's Travels. Hill & Wang, (2006), ISBN 0809094355.
10. ^ Examples of political invective include libel poetry and the classical
epigrams of Martial and Catullus.
11. ^ In ancient Greece, medical and scholarly works were often written in
metrical form. A millennium and a half later, many of Avicenna's medical
texts were written in verse.
12. ^ Władysław Tatarkiewicz, "The Concept of Poetry," Dialectics and
Humanism, vol. II, no. 2 (spring 1975).
13. ^ Heath (ed), Aristotle's Poetics, 1997.
14. ^ Ibn Rushd wrote a commentary on the Aristotle's Poetics, replacing the
original examples with passages from Arabic poets. See, for example, W. F.
Bogges. 'Hermannus Alemannus' Latin Anthology of Arabic Poetry,' Journal of
the American Oriental Society, 1968, Volume 88, 657–70, and Charles Burnett,
'Learned Knowledge of Arabic Poetry, Rhymed Prose, and Didactic Verse from
Petrus Alfonsi to Petrarch', in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A
Festschrift for Peter Dronke. Brill Academic Publishers, (2001), ISBN
90-04-11964-7.
15. ^ See, for example, Paul F Grendler. The Universities of the Italian
Renaissance. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, (2004),
ISBN 0-8018-8055-6 (for example, page 239) for the prominence of Aristotle
and the Poetics on the Renaissance curriculum.
16. ^ Immanuel Kant (J.H. Bernard, Trans.). Critique of Judgment at 131, for
example, argues that the nature of poetry as a self-consciously abstract and
beautiful form raises it to the highest level among the verbal arts, with
tone or music following it, and only after that the more logical and
narrative prose.
17. ^ Christensen, A., Crisafulli-Jones, L., Galigani, G. and Johnson, A. (Eds).
The Challenge of Keats. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi, (2000).
18. ^ See, for example, Dylan Thomas's discussion of the poet as creator in
Quite Early One Morning. New York, New York: New Directions Press, (1967).
19. ^ The title of "Ars Poetica" alludes to Horace's commentary of the same
title. The poem sets out a range of dicta for what poetry ought to be,
before concluding with its classic lines.[1]
20. ^ See, for example, Walton Liz and Christopher MacGowen (Eds.).
Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. New York, New York: New
Directions Publications, (1988), or the works of Odysseus Elytis.
21. ^ See, for example, T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land, in T. S. Eliot. The
Waste Land and Other Poems. London, England: Faber & Faber, (1940)."
22. ^ See, Roland Barthes essay "Death of the Author" in Image-Music-Text.
New York, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1978).
23. ^ Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry at 52.
24. ^ See, for example, Julia Schülter. Rhythmic Grammar, Berlin, Germany:
Walter de Gruyter, (2005).
25. ^ See Yip. Tone. (2002), which includes a number of maps showing the
distribution of tonal languages.
26. ^ Howell D. Chickering. Beowulf: a Dual-language Edition. Garden City,
New York: Anchor (1977), ISBN 0385062133.
27. ^ See, for exmample, John Lazarus and W. H. Drew (Trans.). Thirukkural.
Asian Educational Services (2001), ISBN 81-206-0400-8. (Original in Tamil
with English translation).
28. ^ See, for example, Marianne Moore. Idiosyncrasy and Technique.
Berkeley, California: University of California, (1958), or, for examples,
William Carlos Williams. The Broken Span. Norfolk, Connecticut: New
Directions, (1941).
29. ^ Robinson Jeffers. Selected Poems. New York, New York: Vintage, (1965).
30. ^ Paul Fussell. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. McGraw Hill, (1965, rev.
1979), ISBN 0-07-553606-4.
31. ^ Christine Brooke-Rose. A ZBC of Ezra Pound. Faber and Faber, (1971),
ISBN 0-571-09135-0.
32. ^ Robert Pinsky. The Sounds of Poetry. New York, New York: Farrar Straus
and Giroux, (1998), 11–24, ISBN 0374526176.
33. ^ Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry.
34. ^ John Thompson, The Founding of English Meter.
35. ^ See, for example, "Yertle the Turtle" in Dr. Seuss. Yertle the Turtle
and Other Stories. New York: Random House, (1958), lines from "Yurtle the
Turtle" are scanned in the discussion of anapestic tetrameter.
36. ^ Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry at 66.
37. ^ Vladimir Nabokov. Notes on Prosody. New York, New York: The Bollingen
Foundation, (1964), ISBN 0691017603.
38. ^ Nabokov. Notes on Prosody.
39. ^ Two versions of Paradise Lost are freely available on-line from
Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg text version 1 and Project Gutenberg
text version 2.
40. ^ The original text, as translated by Samuel Butler, is available at
Wikisource.[2]
41. ^ The full text is available online both in Russian[3] and as translated
into English by Charles Johnston.[4] Please see the pages on Eugene Onegin
and on Notes on Prosody and the references on those pages for discussion of
the problems of translation and of the differences between Russian and
English iambic tetrameter.
42. ^ The full text of "The Raven" is available at Wikisource[5].
43. ^ The full text of "The Hunting of the Snark" is available at Wikisource.[6]
44. ^ The full text of Don Juan is available on-line.[7]
45. ^ See the Text of the play in French as well as an English translation,
Phaedra, available at Project Gutenberg.
46. ^ Rhyme, alliteration, assonance or consonance can also carry a meaning
separate from the repetitive sound patterns created. For example, Chaucer
used heavy alliteration to mock Old English verse and to paint a character
as archaic, and Christopher Marlowe used interlocking alliteration and
consonance of "th", "f" and "s" sounds to force a lisp on a character he
wanted to paint as effeminate. See, for example, the opening speech in
Tamburlaine the Great available online at Project Gutenberg.
47. ^ For a good discussion of hard and soft rhyme see Robert Pinsky's
introduction to Dante Alighieri, Robert Pinsky (Trans.). The Inferno of
Dante: A New Verse Translation. New York, New York: Farar Straus & Giroux,
(1994), ISBN 0374176744; the Pinsky translation includes many demonstrations
of the use of soft rhyme.
48. ^ Dante (1994).
49. ^ See the introduction to Burton Raffel. Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight. New York, New York: Signet Books, (1984), ISBN 0451628233.
50. ^ Maria Rosa Menocal. The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania, (2003), ISBN
0812213246. Irish poetry also employed rhyme relatively early, and may have
influenced the development of rhyme in other European languages.
51. ^ Indeed, in translating the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald
sought to retain the scheme in English. The original text is available from
the Gutenberg Porject on-line for free.etext #246
52. ^ Works by Petrarch at Project Gutenberg
53. ^ The Divine Comedy at wikisource.
54. ^ See Robert Pinsky's discussion of the difficulties of replicating
terza rima in English in Robert Pinsky (trans). The Inferno of Dante: A New
Verse Translation. (1994).
55. ^ For examples of different uses of visual space in modern poetry, see
E. E. Cummings works or C.J. Moore's poetic translation of the Fables of
LaFontaine, which usees color and page placement to complement the
illustrations of Marc Chagall. Marc Chagall (illust) and C.J. Moore
(trans.). Fables of La Fontaine. The New Press, (1977), ISBN 1565844041.
56. ^ A good pre-modernist example of concrete poetry is the poem about the
mouse's tale in the shape of a long tail in Lewis Carroll's Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland, available in Wikisource. [8]
57. ^ See, for example, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor
Coleridge for a well-known example of symbolism and metaphor used in poetry.
The albatross that is killed by the mariner is a traditional symbol of good
luck, and its death takes on metaphorical implications.
58. ^ See The Poetics of Aristotle, available at Project Gutenberg. at 22.
59. ^ Aesop's Fables, rendered in both verse and prose repeatedly since
first being recorded about 500 B.C., are perhaps the richest single source
of allegorical poetry through the ages. Other notables examples include the
Roman de la Rose, a 13th-century French poem, William Langland's Piers
Ploughman in the 14th century, and Jean de la Fontaine's Fables (influenced
by Aesop's) in the 17th century (available in French on wikisource).[9].
60. ^ See Act III, Scene II in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar,
available at Wikisource.[10]
61. ^ Arthur Quiller-Couch (Ed). Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford
University Press, (1900). Note that the relative prominence of a poet or a
set of works is often measured by reference to the Oxford Book of English
Verse or the Norton Anthology of Poetry, with many people counting poems or
pages allocated to a given poet or subject.
62. ^ E.g., "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" in Dylan Thomas. In
Country Sleep and Other Poems. New York, New York: New Directions
Publications, (1952).
63. ^ "Villanelle", in W.H. Auden. Collected Poems. New York, New York:
Random House, (1945).
64. ^ "One Art", in Elizabeth Bishop. Geography III. New York, New York,
Farar, Straus & Giroux, (1976).
65. ^ The extant Odes of Pindar as translated by Ernest Myers are freely
available on-line from Gutenberg.
66. ^ In particular, the translations of Horace's odes by John Dryden were
influential in establishing the form in English, though Dryden utilizes
rhyme in his translations where Horace did not.
67. ^ For a general discussion of genre theory on the internet, see Daniel
Chandler's Introduction to Genre Theory[11].
68. ^ See, for example, Northrup Frye. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, (1957).
69. ^ Jacques Derrida, Beverly Bie Brahic (Trans.). Geneses, Genealogies,
Genres, And Genius: The Secrets of the Archive. New York, New York: Columbia
University Press(2006), ISBN 0231139780.
70. ^ Shakespeare parodied such analysis in Hamlet, describing the genres as
consisting of "tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral..."
Anthologies
* Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter & Jon Stallworthy (Eds). The Norton
Anthology of Poetry. New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (4th ed, 1996),
ISBN 0393968200 .
* Helen Gardner (Ed). New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1950. New York,
New York and London, England: Oxford University Press, (1972), ISBN
0-19-812136-9.
* Donald Hall (Ed). New Poets of England and America. New York, New York:
Meridian Press, (1957).
* Philip Larkin (Ed). Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. New
York, New York and London, England: Oxford University Press, (1973)
* James Laughlin (Ed). New Directions in Prose and Poetry Annuals. Norfolk,
Connecticut and New York, New York: New Directions Publications (1936–1991).
* Arthur Quiller-Couch (Ed). Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford University
Press, (1900).
* W.B. Yeats (Ed). Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935. Oxford University
Press, (1936)
Scansion and Form
* Alfred Corn. The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody. London, England:
Storyline Press (1997), ISBN 1885266405.
* Paul Fussell. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. New York, New York: Random
House (1965).
* John Hollander. Rhyme's Reason (3rd ed). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale
University Press (2001).
* James McAuley. Versification, A Short Introduction. Michigan State
University Press (1983), ISBN B0007DTS8K
* Robert Pinsky. The Sounds of Poetry (1998).
Critical and historical works
* Cleanth Brooks. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry.
New York, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, (1947).
* William K. Wimsatt, Jr. & Cleanth Brooks. Literary Criticism: A Short
History. New York, New York: Vintage Books, (1957).
* T. S. Eliot. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. London,
England: Methuen Publishing, Ltd., (1920).
* George Gascoigne. Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of
English Verse or Ryme[12].
* Ezra Pound. ABC of Reading. London, England: Faber, (1951).
* Władysław Tatarkiewicz. "The Concept of Poetry," translated by Christopher
Kasparek, Dialectics and Humanism: the Polish Philosophical Quarterly, vol.
II, no. 2 (spring 1975), pp. 13–24.
* John Thompson. The Founding of English Meter. New York, New York: Columbia
University Press (1961).
Linguistics and language
* Zhiming Bao. The structure of tone. New York, New York: Oxford University
Press (1999) ISBN 0-19-511880-4.
* Morio Kono. "Perception and Psychology of Rhythm" in Accent, Intonation,
Rhythm and Pause. (1997).
* Moria Yip. Tone. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press (2002) ISBN 0-521-77314-8 (hbk), ISBN 0-521-77445-4 (pbk).
Other Works
* Alex Preminger, Terry V.F. Brogan and Frank J. Warnke (Eds). The New
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (3rd Ed.). Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-02123-6.
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