Different Types of Poetry. Different Types of Poetry.

Poetry is the expression of a thought, an idea, a concept or a story in a structured form

which has a flow and a music created by the sounds and syllables in it.

Acrostic: Acrostic poetry is one that contains certain letters, which are usually placed at the
beginning of each line. These letters form a message or word when they are read in a
sequence.

Ballad: This type of poetry is short and narrative and is made up of stanzas of two to four
lines. Ballads usually have a refrain. They also deal mostly with folklore or popular trends
though some also originate from a wide range of subject matter. The verses in ballads are
straight-forward and seldom have any detail. Apart from that, ballads always possess
graphic simplicity and force.

Blank Verse: A blank verse is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. This form is a little
like the rhythms of speech.

Burlesque: In this kind of poetry a subject that is serious in nature is treated as humor.

Cinquain: A cinquain is short poem that is made up of five lines that are usually unrhymed.
These five lines contain two, four, six, eight and two syllables respectively.

Clerihew: This type of poetry is made up of a comic verse that has two couplets and a
specific rhyming scheme.

Didactic Poetry: Didactic poems are poems that are written in order to instruct or teach.

Epic: This type of poem is long and narrative in nature. It talks about the adventures of a
hero. Epics usually deal with the history and traditions of a nation.

Epigram: Practiced by poets like Robert Frost, William Blake and Ben Jonson, epigrams are
short poems that possess satire. This type of poetry ends with a stinging punchline or
humorous retort. Common forms of epigrams are written as a couplet.

Epitaph: A short poem with rhyming lines written on a tombstone in praise of a deceased
person is called an epitaph.

Elegy: This type of poetry is sad and thoughtful in nature. They talk about the death of an
individual.

Free Verse: Like the name suggests, free verse is poetry that is irregular. This type of
poetry has content which is free from the traditional rules of using verse.

Ode: A poem that is written in praise of a place, thing or person, is known as an ode.


Sonnet: A poem that is made up of 14 lines and a particular rhyming scheme is called a
sonnet.

Couplet: Perhaps the most popular type of poetry used, the couplet has stanzas made up of
two lines which rhyme with each other.

Types of Poetry
When studying poetry, it is useful first of all to consider the theme and the
overalldevelopment of the theme in the poem. Obviously, the sort of development that
takes place depends to a considerable extent on the type of poem one is dealing with. It
is useful to keep two general distinctions in mind (for more detailed definitions consult
Abrams 1999 and Preminger et al 1993): lyric poetry and narrative poetry.
Lyric Poetry
A lyric poem is a comparatively short, non-narrative poem in which a single speaker
presents a state of mind or an emotional state. Lyric poetry retains some of the elements
of song which is said to be its origin: For Greek writers the lyric was a song accompanied
by the lyre.
Subcategories of the lyric are, for example elegy, ode, sonnet and dramatic monologue
and most occasional poetry:
In modern usage, elegy is a formal lament for the death of a particular person (for
example Tennysons In Memoriam A.H.H.). More broadly defined, the term elegy is also
used for solemn meditations, often on questions of death, such as Gray's Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard.
An ode is a long lyric poem with a serious subject written in an elevated style. Famous
examples are Wordsworths Hymn to Duty or Keats Ode to a Grecian Urn.
The sonnet was originally a love poem which dealt with the lovers sufferings and
hopes. It originated in Italy and became popular in England in the Renaissance,
whenThomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey translated and imitated the sonnets written
byPetrarch (Petrarchan sonnet). From the seventeenth century onwards the sonnet
was also used for other topics than love, for instance for religious experience
(by Donne and Milton), reflections on art (by Keats or Shelley) or even the war
experience (by Brooke or Owen). The sonnet uses a single stanza of (usually) fourteen
lines and an intricate rhyme pattern (see stanza forms). Many poets wrote a series of
sonnets linked by the same theme, so-called sonnet cycles (for instance
Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare, Drayton, Barret-Browning, Meredith) which depict the
various stages of a love relationship.
In a dramatic monologue a speaker, who is explicitly someone other than the author,
makes a speech to a silent auditor in a specific situation and at a critical moment.
Without intending to do so, the speaker reveals aspects of his temperament and
character. In Browning's My Last Duchess for instance, the Duke shows the picture of
his last wife to the emissary from his prospective new wife and reveals his excessive
pride in his position and his jealous temperament.
Occasional poetry is written for a specific occasion: a wedding (then it is called
anepithalamion, for instance Spensers Epithalamion), the return of a king from exile
(for instance Drydens Annus Mirabilis) or a death (for example MiltonsLycidas), etc.

Narrative Poetry
Narrative poetry gives a verbal representation, in verse, of a sequence of connected
events, it propels characters through a plot. It is always told by a narrator. Narrative
poems might tell of a love story (like Tennyson's Maud), the story of a father and son
(like Wordsworth's Michael) or the deeds of a hero or heroine (like Walter Scott's Lay of
the Last Minstrel).
Sub-categories of narrative poetry:
Epics usually operate on a large scale, both in length and topic, such as the founding of
a nation (Virgils Aeneid) or the beginning of world history (Milton's Paradise Lost),
they tend to use an elevated style of language and supernatural beings take part in the
action.
The mock-epic makes use of epic conventions, like the elevated style and the
assumption that the topic is of great importance, to deal with completely insignificant
occurrences. A famous example is Pope's The Rape of the Lock, which tells the story of a
young beauty whose suitor secretly cuts off a lock of her hair.
A ballad is a song, originally transmitted orally, which tells a story. It is an important
form of folk poetry which was adapted for literary uses from the sixteenth century
onwards. The ballad stanza is usually a four-line stanza, alternating tetrameter and
trimeter.
Descriptive and Didactic Poetry
Both lyric and narrative poetry can contain lengthy and detailed descriptions
(descriptive poetry) or scenes in direct speech (dramatic poetry).
The purpose of a didactic poem is primarily to teach something. This can take the
form of very specific instructions, such as how to catch a fish, as in James ThomsonsThe
Seasons (Spring 379-442) or how to write good poetry as in Alexander PopesEssay on
Criticism. But it can also be meant as instructive in a general way. Until the twentieth
century all literature was expected to have a didactic purpose in a general sense, that is,
to impart moral, theoretical or even practical knowledge; Horacefamously demanded
that poetry should combine prodesse (learning) anddelectare (pleasure). The
twentieth century was more reluctant to proclaim literature openly as a teaching tool.
English Poetry

English poetry
The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present
day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring poems in
European culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe.
Consequently, the term English poetry is unavoidably ambiguous. It can mean poetry
written in England, or poetry written in the English language.
The earliest surviving poetry from the area currently known as England was likely
transmitted orally and then written down in versions that do not now survive; thus, dating
the earliest poetry remains difficult and often controversial. The earliest surviving
manuscripts date from the 10th century. Poetry written in Latin, Brythonic (a predecessor
language of Welsh) and Old Irish survives which may date as early as the 6th century. The
earliest surviving poetry written in Anglo-Saxon, the most direct predecessor of modern
English, may have been composed as early as the seventh century.
With the growth of trade and the British Empire, the English language had been widely used
outside England. In the twenty-first century, only a small percentage of the world's native
English speakers live in England, and there is also a vast population of non-native speakers
of English who are capable of writing poetry in the language. A number of major national
poetries, including the American, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and Indian poetry have
emerged and developed. Since 1922, Irish poetry has also been increasingly viewed as a
separate area of study.
This article focuses on poetry written in English by poets born or spending a significant part
of their lives in England. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been
applied with common sense, and reference is made to poetry in other languages or poets
who are not primarily English where appropriate.
Contents
1 The earliest English poetry
2 The Anglo-Norman period and the Later Middle Ages
3 The Renaissance in England
o 3.1 Early Renaissance poetry
o 3.2 The Elizabethans
3.2.1 Elizabethan song
3.2.2 Courtly poetry
3.2.3 Elizabethan verse drama
3.2.4 Classicism
o 3.3 Jacobean and Caroline poetry
3.3.1 The Metaphysical poets
3.3.2 The Cavalier poets
4 The Restoration and 18th century
o 4.1 Satire
o 4.2 18th century classicism
o 4.3 Women poets in the 18th century
o 4.4 The late 18th century
5 The Romantic movement
6 Victorian poetry
o 6.1 High Victorian poetry
o 6.2 Pre-Raphaelites, arts and crafts, Aestheticism, and the "Yellow" 1890s
7 The 20th century
o 7.1 The first three decades
7.1.1 The Georgian poets and World War I
7.1.2 Modernism
o 7.2 The Thirties
o 7.3 The Forties
o 7.4 The Fifties
o 7.5 The 1960s and 1970s
8 English poetry now
9 Notes
10 References
11 See also
12 External links

[edit] The earliest English poetry
The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation; Bede attributes this to Cadman
(fl. 658680), who was, according to legend, an illiterate herdsman who produced
extemporaneous poetry at a monastery at Whitby.[1] This is generally taken as marking the
beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
Much of the poetry of the period is difficult to date, or even to arrange chronologically; for
example, estimates for the date of the great epic Beowulf range from AD 608 right through
to AD 1000, and there has never been anything even approaching a consensus.[2] It is
possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of the Rood was written
before circa AD 700, when excerpts were carved in runes on the Ruth well Cross.[3] Some
poems on historical events, such as The Battle of Brunanburh (937) and the Battle of
Malden (991), appear to have been composed shortly after the events in question, and can
be dated reasonably precisely in consequence.
By and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorized by the manuscripts in which it
survives, rather than its date of composition. The most important manuscripts are the four
great poetical codices of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, known as the Cadman
manuscript, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Beowulf manuscript.
While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth. Beowulf is the
only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere
and the Finns burg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include
much religious verse, from devotional works to biblical paraphrase; elegies such as The
Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin (often taken to be a description of the ruins of Bath);
and numerous proverbs, riddles, and charms.
With one notable exception (Rhyming Poem), Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on alliterative
verse for its structure and any rhyme included is merely ornamental.
[edit] The Anglo-Norman period and the Later Middle Ages
See also: Anglo-Norman literature
With the Norman Conquest of England, beginning in 1066, the Anglo-Saxon language
rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke French, and
this became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. As the invaders
integrated, their language and literature mingled with that of the natives: the French dialect
of the upper classes became Anglo-Norman, and Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual
transition into Middle English.
While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means
died out, and a number of important works illustrate the development of the language.
Around the turn of the thirteenth century, Layman wrote his Brut, based on Wace's twelfth
century Anglo-Norman epic of the same name; Layman's language is recognizably Middle
English, though his prosody shows a strong Anglo-Saxon influence remaining. Other
transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of romances
and lyrics. With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced
French and Latin in Parliament and courts of law.
It was with the fourteenth century that major works of English literature began once again
to appear; these include the so-called Pearl Poet's Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, and Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight; Langland's political and religious allegory Piers Plowman;
Gower's Confessio Amantis; and, of course, the works of Chaucer, the most highly regarded
English poet of the Middle Ages, who was seen by his contemporaries as a successor to the
great tradition of Virgil and Dante.
The reputation of Chaucer's successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with
him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. However, the century really belongs to
a group of remarkable Scottish writers. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of
The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland. The main poets of this Scottish group were Robert
Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. Henryson and Douglas introduced a note of
almost savage satire, which may have owed something to the Gaelic bards, while Douglas'
version of Virgil's Aeneid is one of the early monuments of Renaissance literary humanism
in English.
[edit] The Renaissance in England
The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date
being around 1509. It is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until
the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the
introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets
had, as already noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle and the writings of
European Renaissance precursors such as Dante.
The introduction of movable-block printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the
more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also
printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a
native poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings
of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Eliot helped bring the ideas and
attitudes associated with the new learning to an English audience.
Three other factors in the establishment of the English Renaissance were the Reformation,
Counter Reformation, and the opening of the era of English naval power and overseas
exploration and expansion. The establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated
the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated
intellectual and artistic life. At the same time, long-distance sea voyages helped provide the
stimulus and information that underpinned a new understanding of the nature of the
universe which resulted in the theories of Nicolas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler.
[edit] Early Renaissance poetry
With a small number of exceptions, the early years of the 16th century are not particularly
notable. The Douglas Aeneid was completed in 1513 and John Skelton wrote poems that
were transitional between the late Medieval and Renaissance styles. The new king, Henry
VIII, was something of a poet himself. The most significant English poet of this period was
Thomas Wyatt, who was among the first poets to write sonnets in English.
[edit] The Elizabethans
The Elizabethan period (1558 to 1603) in poetry is characterized by a number of frequently
overlapping developments. The introduction and adaptation of themes, models and verse
forms from other European traditions and classical literature, the Elizabethan song tradition,
the emergence of a courtly poetry often centred around the figure of the monarch and the
growth of a verse-based drama are among the most important of these developments.
[edit] Elizabethan song
A wide range of Elizabethan poets wrote songs, including Nicholas Grimald, Thomas Nashe
and Robert Southwell. There are also a large number of extant anonymous songs from the
period. Perhaps the greatest of all the songwriters was Thomas Campion. Campion is also
notable because of his experiments with meters based on counting syllables rather than
stresses. These quantitative meters were based on classical models and should be viewed
as part of the wider Renaissance revival of Greek and Roman artistic methods.
The songs were generally printed either in miscellanies or anthologies such as Richard
Tottel's 1557 Songs and Sonnets or in songbooks that included printed music to enable
performance. These performances formed an integral part of both public and private
entertainment. By the end of the 16th century, a new generation of composers, including
John Dow land, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley were
helping to bring the art of Elizabethan song to an extremely high musical level.
[edit] Courtly poetry
With the consolidation of Elizabeth's power, a genuine court sympathetic to poetry and the
arts in general emerged. This encouraged the emergence of a poetry aimed at, and often
set in, an idealised version of the courtly world.
Among the best known examples of this are Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, which is
effectively an extended hymn of praise to the queen, and Philip Sidney's Arcadia. This
courtly trend can also be seen in Spenser's Shepherds Calendar. This poem marks the
introduction into an English context of the classical pastoral, a mode of poetry that assumes
an aristocratic audience with a certain kind of attitude to the land and peasants. The
explorations of love found in the sonnets of William Shakespeare and the poetry of Walter
Raleigh and others also implies a courtly audience.
[edit] Elizabethan verse drama
Elizabethan verse drama is widely considered to be one of the major achievements of
literature in English, and its most famous exponent, William Shakespeare, is revered as the
greatest poet in the language. This drama, which served both as courtly masque and
popular entertainment, deals with all the major themes of contemporary literature and life.
There are plays on European, classical, and religious themes reflecting the importance of
humanism and the Reformation. There are also a number of plays dealing with English
history that may be read as part of an effort to strengthen the British national myth and as
artistic underpinnings for Elizabeth's resistance to the Spanish and other foreign threats. A
number of the comic works for the stage also use bucolic themes connected with the
pastoral genre.
In addition to Shakespeare, other notable dramatists of the period include Christopher
Marlowe, Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson.
[edit] Classicism
Gavin Douglas' Aeneid, Thomas Campion's metrical experiments, and Spenser's Shepherds
Calendar and plays like Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra are all examples of the
influence of classicism on Elizabethan poetry. It remained common for poets of the period to
write on themes from classical mythology; Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and the
Christopher Marlowe/George Chapman Hero and Leander are examples of this kind of work.
Translations of classical poetry also became more widespread, with the versions of Ovid's
Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (15657) and George Sandys (1626), and Chapman's
translations of Homer's Iliad (1611) and Odyssey (c.1615), among the outstanding
examples.
[edit] Jacobean and Caroline poetry
English Renaissance poetry after the Elizabethan poetry can be seen as belonging to one of
three strains; the Metaphysical poets, the Cavalier poets and the school of Spenser.
However, the boundaries between these three groups are not always clear and an individual
poet could write in more than one manner.
[edit] The Metaphysical poets
The early 17th century saw the emergence of this group of poets who wrote in a witty,
complicated style. The most famous of the Metaphysicals is probably John Donne. Others
include George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell and Richard Crashaw. John Milton
in his Comus falls into this group. The Metaphysical poets went out of favour in the 18th
century but began to be read again in the Victorian era. Donne's reputation was finally fully
restored by the approbation of T. S. Eliot in the early 20th century.
[edit] The Cavalier poets
The Cavalier poets wrote in a lighter, more elegant and artificial style than the Metaphysical
poets. Leading members of the group include Ben Jonson, Richard Lovelace, Robert Herrick,
Edmund Waller, Thomas Carew and John Denham. The Cavalier poets can be seen as the
forerunners of the major poets of the Augustan era, who admired them greatly.
[edit] The Restoration and 18th century
It is perhaps ironic that Paradise Lost, a story of fallen pride, was the first major poem to
appear in England after the Restoration. The court of Charles II had, in its years in France,
learned a worldliness and sophistication that marked it as distinctively different from the
monarchies that preceded the Republic. Even if Charles had wanted to reassert the divine
right of kingship, the Protestantism and taste for power of the intervening years would have
rendered it impossible.
[edit] Satire
It is hardly surprising that the world of fashion and scepticism that emerged encouraged the
art of satire. All the major poets of the period, Samuel Butler, John Dryden, Alexander Pope
and Samuel Johnson, and the Irish poet Jonathan Swift, wrote satirical verse. What is
perhaps more surprising is that their satire was often written in defence of public order and
the established church and government. However, writers such as Pope used their gift for
satire to create scathing works responding to their detractors or to criticize what they saw
as social atrocities perpetrated by the government. Pope's "The Dunciad" is a satirical
slaying of two of his literary adversaries (Lewis Theobald, and Colley Cibber in a later
version), expressing the view that British society was falling apart morally, culturally, and
intellectually.
[edit] 18th century classicism
The 18th century is sometimes called the Augustan age, and contemporary admiration for
the classical world extended to the poetry of the time. Not only did the poets aim for a
polished high style in emulation of the Roman ideal, they also translated and imitated Greek
and Latin verse. Dryden translated all the known works of Virgil, and Pope produced
versions of the two Homeric epics. Horace and Juvenal were also widely translated and
imitated, Horace most famously by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and Juvenal by Samuel
Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.479
[edit] Women poets in the 18th century
A number of women poets of note emerged during the period of the Restoration, including
Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Chudleigh, Anne Finch, Anne Killigrew, and
Katherine Philips. Nevertheless, print publication by women poets was still relatively scarce
when compared to that of men, though manuscript evidence indicates that many more
women poets were practicing than was previously thought. Disapproval of feminine
"forwardness," however, kept many out of print in the early part of the period, and even as
the century progressed women authors still felt the need to justify their incursions into the
public sphere by claiming economic necessity or the pressure of friends. Women writers
were increasingly active in all genres throughout the eighteenth century, and by the 1790s
women's poetry was flourishing. Notable poets later in the period include Anna Laetitia
Barbauld, Joanna Baillie, Susanna Blamire, Felicia Hemans, Mary Leapor, Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, Hannah More, and Mary Robinson. In the past decades there has been substantial
scholarly and critical work done on women poets of the long eighteenth century: first, to
reclaim them and make them available in contemporary editions in print or online, and
second, to assess them and position them within a literary tradition.
[edit] The late 18th century
Towards the end of the 18th century, poetry began to move away from the strict Augustan
ideals and a new emphasis on sentiment and the feelings of the poet. This trend can
perhaps be most clearly seen in the handling of nature, with a move away from poems
about formal gardens and landscapes by urban poets and towards poems about nature as
lived in. The leading exponents of this new trend include Thomas Gray, William Cowper,
George Crabbe, Christopher Smart and Robert Burns as well as the Irish poet Oliver
Goldsmith. These poets can be seen as paving the way for the Romantic movement.
[edit] The Romantic Movement
The last quarter of the 18th century was a time of social and political turbulence, with
revolutions in the United States, France, Ireland and elsewhere. In Great Britain, movement
for social change and a more inclusive sharing of power was also growing. This was the
backdrop against which the Romantic movement in English poetry emerged.
The main poets of this movement were William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats. The birth of English
Romanticism is often dated to the publication in 1798 of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical
Ballads. However, Blake had been publishing since the early 1780s. However, much of the
focus on Blake only came about during the last century when Northrop Frye discussed his
work in his book "The Anatomy of Criticism."
In poetry, the Romantic movement emphasised the creative expression of the individual and
the need to find and formulate new forms of expression. The Romantics, with the partial
exception of Byron, rejected the poetic ideals of the eighteenth century, and each of them
returned to Milton for inspiration, though each drew something different from Milton. They
also put a good deal of stress on their own originality. To the Romantics, the moment of
creation was the most important in poetic expression and could not be repeated once it
passed. Because of this new emphasis, poems that were not complete were nonetheless
included in a poet's body of work (such as Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel").
Additionally, the Romantic movement marked a shift in the use of language. Attempting to
express the "language of the common man", Wordsworth and his fellow Romantic poets
focused on employing poetic language for a wider audience, countering the mimetic, tightly
constrained Neo-Classic poems (although it's important to note that the poet wrote first and
foremost for his own creative, expression). In Shelley's "Defense of Poetry", he contends
that poets are the "creators of language" and that the poet's job is to refresh language for
their society.
The Romantics were not the only poets of note at this time. In the work of John Clare the
late Augustan voice is blended with a peasant's first-hand knowledge to produce arguably
some of the finest nature poetry in the English language. Another contemporary poet who
does not fit into the Romantic group was Walter Savage Landor. Landor was a classicist
whose poetry forms a link between the Augustans and Robert Browning, who much admired
it.
[edit] Victorian poetry
The Victorian era was a period of great political, social and economic change. The Empire
recovered from the loss of the American colonies and entered a period of rapid expansion.
This expansion, combined with increasing industrialisation and mechanisation, led to a
prolonged period of economic growth. The Reform Act 1832 was the beginning of a process
that would eventually lead to universal suffrage.
[edit] High Victorian poetry
The major High Victorian poets were Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Tennyson was, to some
degree, the Spenser of the new age and his Idylls of the Kings can be read as a Victorian
version of The Faerie Queen, that is as a poem that sets out to provide a mythic foundation
to the idea of empire.
The Brownings spent much of their time out of England and explored European models and
matter in much of their poetry. Robert Browning's great innovation was the dramatic
monologue, which he used to its full extent in his long novel in verse, The Ring and the
Book. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is perhaps best remembered for Sonnets from the
Portuguese but her long poem Aurora Leigh is one of the classics of 19th century feminist
literature.
Matthew Arnold was much influenced by Wordsworth, though his poem Dover Beach is often
considered a precursor of the modernist revolution. Hopkins wrote in relative obscurity and
his work was not published until after his death. His unusual style (involving what he called
"sprung rhythm" and heavy reliance on rhyme and alliteration) had a considerable influence
on many of the poets of the 1940s.
[edit] Pre-Raphaelites, arts and crafts, Aestheticism, and the "Yellow" 1890s
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a mid-19th century arts movement dedicated to the
reform of what they considered the sloppy Mannerist painting of the day. Although primarily
concerned with the visual arts, two members, the brother and sister Dante Gabriel Rossetti
and Christina Rossetti, were also poets of some ability. Their poetry shares many of the
concerns of the painters; an interest in Medieval models, an almost obsessive attention to
visual detail and an occasional tendency to lapse into whimsy.
Dante Rossetti worked with, and had some influence on, the leading Arts and crafts painter
and poet William Morris. Morris shared the Pre-Raphaelite interest in the poetry of the
European Middle Ages, to the point of producing some illuminated manuscript volumes of
his work.
Towards the end of the century, English poets began to take an interest in French
symbolism and Victorian poetry entered a decadent fin-de-siecle phase. Two groups of
poets emerged, the Yellow Book poets who adhered to the tenets of Aestheticism, including
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons and the Rhymer's Club group
that included Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and William Butler Yeats.
[edit] The 20th century
[edit] The first three decades
The Victorian era continued into the early years of the 20th century and two figures
emerged as the leading representative of the poetry of the old era to act as a bridge into
the new. These were Yeats and Thomas Hardy. Yeats, although not a modernist, was to
learn a lot from the new poetic movements that sprang up around him and adapted his
writing to the new circumstances. Hardy was, in terms of technique at least, a more
traditional figure and was to be a reference point for various anti-modernist reactions,
especially from the 1950s onwards.
[edit] The Georgian poets and World War I
The Georgian poets were the first major grouping of the post-Victorian era. Their work
appeared in a series of five anthologies called Georgian Poetry which were published by
Harold Monro and edited by Edward Marsh. The poets featured included Edmund Blunden,
Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare and Siegfried Sassoon.
Their poetry represented something of a reaction to the decadence of the 1890s and tended
towards the sentimental.
Brooke and Sassoon were to go on to win reputations as war poets and Lawrence quickly
distanced himself from the group and was associated with the modernist movement. Other
notable poets who wrote about the war include Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas, Wilfred
Owen, May Cannan and, from the home front, Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. Although many of
these poets wrote socially-aware criticism of the war, most remained technically
conservative and traditionalist.
[edit] Modernism
The early decades of the 20th century saw the United States begin to overtake the United
Kingdom as the major economic power. In the world of poetry, this period also saw
American writers at the forefront of avant-garde practices. Among the foremost of these
poets were T.S. Eliot, H.D. and Ezra Pound, each of whom spent an important part of their
writing lives in England.
Pound's involvement with the Imagists marked the beginning of a revolution in the way
poetry was written. English poets involved with this group included D. H. Lawrence, Richard
Aldington, T. E. Hulme, F. S. Flint, E. E. Cummings, Ford Madox Ford, Allen Upward and
John Cournos. Eliot, particularly after the publication of The Waste Land, became a major
figure and influence on other English poets.
In addition to these poets, other English modernists began to emerge. These included the
London-Welsh poet and painter David Jones, whose first book, In Parenthesis, was one of
the very few experimental poems to come out of World War I, the Scot Hugh MacDiarmid,
Mina Loy and Basil Bunting.
[edit] The Thirties
The poets who began to emerge in the 1930s had two things in common; they had all been
born too late to have any real experience of the pre-World War I world and they grew up in
a period of social, economic and political turmoil. Perhaps as a consequence of these facts,
themes of community, social (in)justice and war seem to dominate the poetry of the
decade.
The poetic landscape of the decade was dominated by four poets; W. H. Auden, Stephen
Spender, Cecil Day-Lewis and Louis MacNeice, although the last of these belongs at least as
much to the history of Irish poetry. These poets were all, in their early days at least,
politically active on the Left. Although they admired Eliot, they also represented a move
away from the technical innovations of their modernist predecessors. A number of other,
less enduring, poets also worked in the same vein. One of these was Michael Roberts,
whose New Country anthology both introduced the group to a wider audience and gave
them their name.
The 1930s also saw the emergence of a home-grown English surrealist poetry whose main
exponents were David Gascoyne, Hugh Sykes Davies, George Barker, and Philip O'Connor.
These poets turned to French models rather than either the New Country poets or English-
language modernism, and their work was to prove of importance to later English
experimental poets as it broadened the scope of the English avant-garde tradition.
John Betjeman and Stevie Smith, who were two of the most significant poets of this period,
stood outside all schools and groups. Betjeman was a quietly ironic poet of Middle England
with a fine command of a wide range of verse techniques. Smith was an entirely
unclassifiable one-off voice.
[edit] The Forties
The 1940s opened with the United Kingdom at war and a new generation of war poets
emerged in response. These included Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, Henry Reed and F. T.
Prince. As with the poets of the First World War, the work of these writers can be seen as
something of an interlude in the history of 20th century poetry. Technically, many of these
war poets owed something to the 1930s poets, but their work grew out of the particular
circumstances in which they found themselves living and fighting.
The main movement in post-war 1940s poetry was the New Romantic group that included
Dylan Thomas, George Barker, W. S. Graham, Kathleen Raine, Henry Treece and J. F.
Hendry. These writers saw themselves as in revolt against the classicism of the New
Country poets. They turned to such models as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Arthur Rimbaud and
Hart Crane and the word play of James Joyce. Thomas, in particular, helped Anglo-Welsh
poetry to emerge as a recognisable force.
Other significant poets to emerge in the 1940s include Lawrence Durrell, Bernard Spencer,
Roy Fuller, Norman Nicholson, Vernon Watkins, R. S. Thomas and Norman McCaig. These
last four poets represent a trend towards regionalism and poets writing about their native
areas; Watkins and Thomas in Wales, Nicholson in Cumberland and MacCaig in Scotland.
[edit] The Fifties
The 1950s were dominated by three groups of poets, The Movement, The Group and a
number of poets that gathered around the label Extremist Art.
The Movement poets as a group came to public notice in Robert Conquest's 1955 anthology
New Lines. The core of the group consisted of Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Jennings, D. J.
Enright, Kingsley Amis, Thom Gunn and Donald Davie. They were identified with a hostility
to modernism and internationalism, and looked to Hardy as a model. However, both Davie
and Gunn later moved away from this position.
As befits their name, the Group were much more formally a group of poets, meeting for
weekly discussions under the chairmanship of Philip Hobsbaum and Edward Lucie-Smith.
Other Group poets included Martin Bell, Peter Porter, Peter Redgrove, George MacBeth and
David Wevill. Hobsbaum spent some time teaching in Belfast, where he was a formative
influence on the emerging Northern Ireland poets including Seamus Heaney.
The term Extremist Art was first used by the poet A. Alvarez to describe the work of the
American poet Sylvia Plath. Other poets associated with this group included Plath's one-time
husband Ted Hughes, Francis Berry and Jon Silkin. These poets are sometimes compared
with the Expressionist German school.
A number of young poets working in what might be termed a modernist vein also started
publishing during this decade. These included Charles Tomlinson, Gael Turnbull, Roy Fisher
and Bob Cobbing. These poets can now be seen as forerunners of some of the major
developments during the following two decades.
[edit] The 1960s and 1970s
In the early part of the 1960s, the centre of gravity of mainstream poetry moved to Ireland,
with the emergence of Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, Paul Muldoon and others. In England,
the most cohesive groupings can, in retrospect, be seen to cluster around what might
loosely be called the modernist tradition and draw on American as well as indigenous
models.
The British Poetry Revival was a wide-reaching collection of groupings and subgroupings
that embraces performance, sound and concrete poetry as well as the legacy of Pound,
Jones, MacDiarmid, Loy and Bunting, the Objectivist poets, the Beats and the Black
Mountain poets, among others. Leading poets associated with this movement include J. H.
Prynne, Eric Mottram, Tom Raworth, Denise Riley and Lee Harwood.
The Mersey Beat poets were Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. Their work was
a self-conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the Beats. Many of their poems
were written in protest against the established social order and, particularly, the threat of
nuclear war. Although not actually a Mersey Beat poet, Adrian Mitchell is often associated
with the group in critical discussion. Contemporary poet Steve Turner has also been
compared with them.
[edit] English poetry now
The last three decades of the 20th century saw a number of short-lived poetic groupings
such as the Martians, along with a general trend towards what has been termed
'Poeclectics'[4], namely an intensification within individual poets' oeuvres of "all kinds of
style, subject, voice, register and form". There was also a growth in interest in women's
writing and in poetry from England's ethnic groupings, especially the West Indian
community. Poets who emerged include Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion, Craig Raine,
Wendy Cope, James Fenton, Blake Morrison, Liz Lochhead, Linton Kwesi Johnson and
Benjamin Zephaniah. Combined with this was a growth in performance poetry fuelled by the
Poetry Slam movement.
A new generation of innovative poets has also sprung up in the wake of the Revival
grouping. Further activity focussed around poets in Bloodaxe Books The New Poetry
including Simon Armitage, Kathleen Jamie, Glyn Maxwell, Selima Hill, Maggie Hannan, and
Michael Hofmann. The New Generation movement flowered in the 1990s and early twenty
first century producing poets such as Don Paterson, Julia Copus, John Stammers, Jacob
Polley, David Morley and Alice Oswald. There has been, too, a remarkable upsurge in
independent and experimental poetry pamphlet publishers such as Flarestack, Heaventree
and Perdika Press. Throughout this period, and to the present, independent poetry presses
such as Enitharmon have continued to promote original work from (among others) Dannie
Abse, Adriano Bulla, Martyn Crucefix, Jane Duran and Mario Petrucci.

. S. T. Coleridge: Function of Poetry

Coleridge poses numerous questions regarding the nature and function of poetry and then
answers them. He also examines the ways in which poetry differs from other kinds of
artistic activity, and the role and significance of metre as an essential and significant part of
a poem.

He begins by emphasizing the difference between prose and poetry.

A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition.

Both use words. Then, the difference between poem and a prose composition cannot lie in
the medium, for each employs words. It must, therefore, consists in a different
combination of them, in consequence of a different object being proposed. A poem
combines words differently, because it is seeking to do something different.

All it may be seeking to do may be to facilitate memory. You may take a piece of
prose and cast it into rhymed and metrical form in order to remember it better.

Rhymed tags of that kind, with their frequent, sounds and quantities, yield a particular
pleasure too, though not of a very high order. If one wants to give the name of poem to a
composition of this kind, there is no reason why one should not. As Coleridge says:

But we should note that, though such rhyming tags have the charm of metre and
rhyme, metre and rhyme have been superadded; they do not arise from the
nature of the content, but have been imposed on it in order to make it more easily
memorized.

The Superficial form, the externalities, provides no profound logical reason for
distinguishing between different ways of handling language.

A difference of object and contents supplies an additional ground of distinction.

The philosopher will seek to differentiate between two ways of handling language by asking
what each seeks to achieve and how that aim determines its nature. The immediate
purpose may be the communication of truth or the communication of pleasure. The
communication of truth might in turn yield a deep pleasure, but, Coleridge insists, one must
distinguish between the ultimate and the immediate end. Similarly, if the immediate aim
be the communication of pleasure, truth may nevertheless be the ultimate end, and while in
an ideal society nothing that was not truth could yield pleasure, in society as it always
existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure has always existed, a literary work
might communicate pleasure without having any concern with truth, either moral or
intellectual.

The proper kinds of distinction between different kinds of writing can thus be
most logically discussed in terms of the difference in the immediate aim, or
function, of each.

The immediate aim of poetry is to give pleasure.

But, The communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically
composed in novels, for example. Do we make these into poems simply by superadding
metre with or without rhyme? To which Coleridge replies by emphasizing a very important
principle: you cannot derive true and permanent pleasure out of any feature or a work
which does not arise naturally from the total nature of that work. To superadd metre is to
provide merely a superficial decorative charm. Nothing can permanently please, which
does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be
superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it. Rhyme and metre involve, an
exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound which in turn are calculated to
excite a perpetual and distinct attention to each part. A poem, therefore, must be an
organic unity in the sense that, while we note and appreciate each part, to which the
regular recurrence of accent and sound draw attention, our pleasure in the whole develops
cumulatively out of such appreciation, which is at the same time pleasurable in itself and
conductive to an awareness of the total pattern of the complete poem.

Thus a poem differs from a work of scientific prose in having as its immediate object
pleasure and not truth, and it differs from other kinds of writing which have pleasure and
not truth as their immediate object by the fact that in a poem the pleasure we take from the
whole work in compatible with, and even led up to by the pleasure we take in each
competent part. Therefore, a legitimate poem is a composition, in which the rhyme and the
metre bear an organic relation to the total work; in it, parts mutually support and explain
each other, all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known
influences of, metrical arrangement.

Thus Coleridge puts an end for good to the age old controversy whether the end of poetry is
instruction or delight or both. Its aim is definitely to give pleasure, and further poetry has
its own distinctive pleasure, pleasure arising from the parts, and this pleasure of the parts
supports and increases the pleasure of the whole.

Not only that, Coleridge also distinguishes a Poem from Poetry. According to Shawcross:

This distinction between poetry and poem is not very clear, and instead of
defining poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he proceeds to
enumerate the characteristics of the Imagination.

This is so because poetry for Coleridge is an activity of the poets mind, and a poem is
merely one of the forms of its expression, a verbal expression of that activity, and poetic
activity is basically an activity of the imagination. As David Daiches points out:

Poetry for Coleridge is a wider category than that of poem; that is, poetry is a
kind of activity which can be engaged in by painters or philosophers or scientists
and is not confined to those who employ metrical language, or even to those who
employ language of any kind. Poetry, in this large sense, brings, the whole soul of
man, into activity, with each faculty playing its proper part according to its
relative worth and dignity.

This takes place whenever the secondary imagination comes into operation. Whenever the
synthesizing, the integrating, powers of the secondary imagination are at work, bringing all
aspects of a subject into a complex unity, then poetry in this larger sense results.

The employment of the secondary imagination is, a poetic activity, and we can see why
Coleridge is led from a discussion of a poem to a discussion of the poets activity when we
realize that for him the poet belongs to the larger company of those who are distinguished
by the activity of their imagination. A poem is always the work of a poet, of a man
employing the secondary imagination and so achieving the harmony of meaning, the
reconciliation of opposites, and so on, which Coleridge so stresses; but a poem is also a
specific work of art produced by a special handling of language.

The harmony and reconciliation resulting from the special kind of creative awareness
achieved by the exercise of the imagination, cannot operate over an extended composition;
one could not sustain that blending and balance, that reconciliation, of sameness, with
difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with
the representative; the sense of novelty and freshens, with old and familiar objects, and so
on, for an indefinite period. A long poem, therefore, would not be all poetry. Indeed,
Coleridge goes to the extent of saying that there is no such thing as a long poem. Rhyme
and metre are appropriate to a poem considered in the larger sense of poetry, because they
are means of achieving harmonization, reconciliation of opposites, and so forth, which, as
we have seen, are objects of poetry in its widest imaginative meaning.

In a legitimate poem, i.e. in a poem which is poetry in the true sense of the word, there is
perfect unity of form and content. The notion of such organic unity runs through all
Coleridges pronouncements of poetry. Rhyme and Metre, are not pleasure superadded for,

Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why
it is so, and not otherwise.

Nothing that is, superadded, merely stuck on for ornament or decoration, can really
please in a poem; every one of its characteristics must grow out of its whole nature and be
an integral part of it. Rhyme and metre are integral to the poem, an essential part of it,
because the pleasure of poetry is a special kind of pleasure, pleasure which results both
from the parts and the whole, and the pleasure arising from the parts augments the
pleasure of the whole. Thyme and metre are essential parts for by their, recurrence of
accent and sound, they invite attention to the pleasure of each separate part, and thus add
to the pleasure of the whole. When, therefore, metre is thus in consonance with the
language and content of the poem, it excites a perpetual and distinct attention to each
part, by the quick reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited, and carries
the reader forward to the end by the pleasurable activity of the mind excited by the
attractions of the journey itself. There is no stopping for him on the way, attracted by the
parts; nor any hastening forward to the end, unattracted by the parts. It is one unbroken
pleasure trip from the parts to the whole.

Thus Coleridge's contribution to the theory of poetry is significant. First, he puts an end for
good to the age old controversy between instruction and delight being the end of poetry,
and establishes that pleasure is the end of the poetry, and that poetry has its own
distinctive pleasure. Secondly, he explodes the neo-classical view of poetry as imitation, and
shows that it is an activity of the imagination which in turn is a shaping and unifying power,
which dissolves, dissipates and creates. Thirdly, he shows that in its very nature poetry
must differ from prose. He controverts Wordsworth's view that rhyme and metre are
merely superadded, shows that they are an organic part of a poem in the real sense of the
word.
Glossary of Poetry Terms


accent
The prominence or emphasis given to a syllable or word. In the word poetry, the accent (or
stress) falls on the first syllable.

alexandrine
A line of poetry that has 12 syllables. The name probably comes from a medieval romance
about Alexander the Great that was written in 12-syllable lines.

alliteration
The repetition of the same or similar sounds at the beginning of words: What would the
world be, once bereft/Of wet and wildness? (Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid)

anapest
A metrical foot of three syllables, two short (or unstressed) followed by one long (or
stressed), as in seventeen and to the moon. The anapest is the reverse of the dactyl.

antithesis
A figure of speech in which words and phrases with opposite meanings are balanced against
each other. An example of antithesis is To err is human, to forgive, divine. (Alexander
Pope)

apostrophe
Words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract
idea. The poem God's World by Edna St. Vincent Millay begins with an apostrophe: O
World, I cannot hold thee close enough!/Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!/Thy mists that roll
and rise!

assonance
The repetition or a pattern of similar sounds, especially vowel sounds: Thou still unravished
bride of quietness,/Thou foster child of silence and slow time (Ode to a Grecian Urn, John
Keats).

ballad
A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is an example of a ballad.

ballade
A type of poem, usually with three stanzas of seven, eight, or ten lines and a shorter final
stanza (or envoy) of four or five lines. All stanzas end with the same one-line refrain.

blank verse
Poetry that is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays
in blank verse.

caesura
A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line. There is a
caesura right after the question mark in the first line of this sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett
Browning: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

canzone
A medieval Italian lyric poem, with five or six stanzas and a shorter concluding stanza (or
envoy). The poets Petrarch and Dante Alighieri were masters of the canzone.

carpe diem
A Latin expression that means seize the day. Carpe diem poems urge the reader (or the
person to whom they are addressed) to live for today and enjoy the pleasures of the
moment. A famous carpe diem poem by Robert Herrick begins Gather ye rosebuds while ye
may

chanson de geste
An epic poem of the 11th to the 14th century, written in Old French, which details the
exploits of a historical or legendary figure, especially Charlemagne.

classicism
The principles and ideals of beauty that are characteristic of Greek and Roman art,
architecture, and literature. Examples of classicism in poetry can be found in the works of
John Dryden and Alexander Pope, which are characterized by their formality, simplicity, and
emotional restraint.

conceit
A fanciful poetic image or metaphor that likens one thing to something else that is
seemingly very different. An example of a conceit can be found in Shakespeare's sonnet
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? and in Emily Dickinson's poem There is no
frigate like a book.

consonance
The repetition of similar consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words, as in lost and
past or confess and dismiss.

couplet
In a poem, a pair of lines that are the same length and usually rhyme and form a complete
thought. Shakespearean sonnets usually end in a couplet.

dactyl
A metrical foot of three syllables, one long (or stressed) followed by two short (or
unstressed), as in happily. The dactyl is the reverse of the anapest.

elegy
A poem that laments the death of a person, or one that is simply sad and thoughtful. An
example of this type of poem is Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

enjambment
The continuation of a complete idea (a sentence or clause) from one line or couplet of a
poem to the next line or couplet without a pause. An example of enjambment can be found
in the first line of Joyce Kilmer's poem Trees: I think that I shall never see/A poem as
lovely as a tree. Enjambment comes from the French word for to straddle.

envoy
The shorter final stanza of a poem, as in a ballade.

epic
A long, serious poem that tells the story of a heroic figure. Two of the most famous epic
poems are the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer, which tell about the Trojan War and the
adventures of Odysseus on his voyage home after
the war.

epigram
A very short, witty poem: Sir, I admit your general rule,/That every poet is a fool,/But you
yourself may serve to show it,/That every fool is not a poet. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

epithalamium (or epithalamion)
A poem in honor of a bride and bridegroom.

feminine rhyme
A rhyme that occurs in a final unstressed syllable: pleasure/leisure, longing/yearning.

figure of speech
A verbal expression in which words or sounds are arranged in a particular way to achieve a
particular effect. Figures of speech are organized into different categories, such as
alliteration, assonance, metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia, simile, and synecdoche.

foot
Two or more syllables that together make up the smallest unit of rhythm in a poem. For
example, an iamb is a foot that has two syllables, one unstressed followed by one stressed.
An anapest has three syllables, two unstressed
followed by one stressed.

free verse (also vers libre)
Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set meter.

haiku
A Japanese poem composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Haiku
often reflect on some aspect of nature.

heptameter
A line of poetry that has seven metrical feet.

heroic couplet
A stanza composed of two rhymed lines in iambic pentameter.

hexameter
A line of poetry that has six metrical feet.

hyperbole
A figure of speech in which deliberate exaggeration is used for emphasis. Many everyday
expressions are examples of hyperbole: tons of money, waiting for ages, a flood of tears,
etc. Hyperbole is the opposite of litotes.

iamb
A metrical foot of two syllables, one short (or unstressed) and one long (or stressed). There
are four iambs in the line Come live/ with me/ and be/ my love, from a poem by
Christopher Marlowe. (The stressed syllables are in bold.) The iamb is the reverse of the
trochee.

iambic pentameter
A type of meter in poetry, in which there are five iambs to a line. (The prefix penta- means
five, as in pentagon, a geometrical figure with five sides. Meter refers to rhythmic units. In
a line of iambic pentameter, there are five rhythmic units that are iambs.) Shakespeare's
plays were written mostly in iambic pentameter, which is the most common type of meter in
English poetry. An example of an iambic pentameter line from Shakespeare's Romeo and
Juliet is But soft!/ What light/ through yon/der win/dow breaks? Another, from Richard III,
is A horse!/ A horse!/ My king/dom for/ a horse! (The stressed syllables are in bold.)

idyll, or idyl
Either a short poem depicting a peaceful, idealized country scene, or a long poem that tells
a story about heroic deeds or extraordinary events set in the distant past. Idylls of the King,
by Alfred Lord Tennyson, is about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

lay
A long narrative poem, especially one that was sung by medieval minstrels called trouvres.
The Lais of Marie de France are lays.

limerick
A light, humorous poem of five usually anapestic lines with the rhyme scheme of aabba.

litotes
A figure of speech in which a positive is stated by negating its opposite. Some examples of
litotes: no small victory, not a bad idea, not unhappy. Litotes is the opposite of hyperbole.

lyric
A poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. A
lyric poem may resemble a song in form or style.

masculine rhyme
A rhyme that occurs in a final stressed syllable: cat/hat, desire/fire, observe/deserve.

metaphor
A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is another,
or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would
be expected. Some examples of metaphors: the world's a stage, he was a lion in battle,
drowning in debt, and a sea of troubles.

meter
The arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of syllables and the rhythm of accented
(or stressed) syllables.

metonymy
A figure of speech in which one word is substituted for another with which it is closely
associated. For example, in the expression The pen is mightier than the sword, the word
pen is used for the written word, and sword is used for military power.

narrative
Telling a story. Ballads, epics, and lays are different kinds of narrative poems.

ode
A lyric poem that is serious and thoughtful in tone and has a very precise, formal structure.
John Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn is a famous example of this type of poem.

onomatopoeia
A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples of onomatopoeic
words are buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, and tick-tock. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale not
only uses onomatopoeia, but calls our attention to it: Forlorn! The very word is like a
bell/To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Another example of onomatopoeia is found
in this line from Tennyson's Come Down, O Maid: The moan of doves in immemorial
elms,/And murmuring of innumerable bees. The repeated m/n sounds reinforce the idea
of murmuring by imitating the hum of insects on a warm
summer day.

ottava rima
A type of poetry consisting of 10- or 11-syllable lines arranged in 8-line octaves with the
rhyme scheme abababcc.

pastoral
A poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, idealized way.

pentameter
A line of poetry that has five metrical feet.

personification
A figure of speech in which things or abstract ideas are given human attributes: dead leaves
dance in the wind, blind justice.

poetry
A type of literature that is written in meter.

quatrain
A stanza or poem of four lines.

refrain
A line or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza.

rhyme
The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words. When the
rhyme occurs in a final stressed syllable, it is said to be masculine: cat/hat, desire/fire,
observe/deserve. When the rhyme occurs in a final unstressed syllable, it is said to be
feminine: longing/yearning. The pattern of rhyme in a stanza or poem is shown usually by
using a different letter for each final sound. In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the
first, second, and fifth lines end in one sound, and the third and fourth lines end in another.

rhyme royal
A type of poetry consisting of stanzas of seven lines in iambic pentameter with the rhyme
scheme ababbcc. Rhyme royal was an innovation introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer.

romanticism
The principles and ideals of the Romantic movement in literature and the arts during the
late 18th and early 19th centuries. Romanticism, which was a reaction to the classicism of
the early 18th century, favored feeling over reason and placed great emphasis on the
subjective, or personal, experience of the individual. Nature was also a major theme. The
great English Romantic poets include Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.

scansion
The analysis of a poem's meter. This is usually done by marking the stressed and
unstressed syllables in each line and then, based on the pattern of the stresses, dividing the
line into feet.

senryu
A short Japanese poem that is similar to a haiku in structure but treats human beings rather
than nature, often in a humorous or satiric way.

simile
A figure of speech in which two things are compared using the word like or as. An
example of a simile using like occurs in Langston Hughes's poem Harlem: What happens
to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?

sonnet
A lyric poem that is 14 lines long. Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnets are divided into two
quatrains and a six-line sestet, with the rhyme scheme abba abba cdecde (or cdcdcd).
English (or Shakespearean) sonnets are composed of three quatrains and a final couplet,
with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. English sonnets are written generally in iambic
pentameter.

spondee
A metrical foot of two syllables, both of which are long (or stressed).

stanza
Two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas
of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of meter and rhyme.

stress
The prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables. Stressed syllables usually stand
out because they have long, rather than short, vowels, or because they have a different
pitch or are louder than other syllables.

synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part is used to designate the whole or the whole is used to
designate a part. For example, the phrase all hands on deck means all men on deck, not
just their hands. The reverse situation, in which the whole is used for a part, occurs in the
sentence The U.S. beat Russia in the final game, where the U.S. and Russia stand for the
U.S. team and the Russian team, respectively.

tanka
A Japanese poem of five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the rest of
seven.

terza rima
A type of poetry consisting of 10- or 11-syllable lines arranged in three-line tercets with
the rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc, etc. The poet Dante is credited with inventing terza rima,
which he used in his Divine Comedy. Terza rima was borrowed into English by Chaucer, and
it has been used by many English poets, including Milton, Shelley, and Auden.

tetrameter
A line of poetry that has four metrical feet.

trochee
A metrical foot of two syllables, one long (or stressed) and one short (or unstressed). An
easy way to remember the trochee is to memorize the first line of a lighthearted poem by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which demonstrates the use of various kinds of metrical feet:
Trochee/ trips from/ long to/ short. (The stressed syllables are in bold.) The trochee is the
reverse of the
iamb.

trope
A figure of speech, such as metaphor or metonymy, in which words are not used in their
literal (or actual) sense but in a figurative (or imaginative) sense.

verse
A single metrical line of poetry, or poetry in general (as opposed to prose).
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@ Aanoo

Did you mean by alienation. This term has various meanings mentioned below :

1. alienation, disaffection, estrangement, dislike
usage: the feeling of being alienated from other people

2. alienation, estrangement, isolation
usage: separation resulting from hostility

3. alienation, transfer, transference
usage: (law) the voluntary and absolute transfer of title and possession of real property
from one person to another; "the power of alienation is an essential ingredient of
ownership"

4. alienation, action
usage: the action of alienating; the action of causing to become unfriendly; "his behavior
alienated the other students"

Besides, This term is also used to "Property law"; defines different aspects.