The term poetry is usually associated with artificial or highly refined
language, whereas prose is regarded as the natural medium of communication.
It appears, however, that the literature of all cultures began with poetry,
whose rhythmic and sensuous qualities satisfy a fundamental human need.
Specific poets, poems, and the national literatures or cultures to which
they belong are discussed elsewhere in the encyclopedia; this article is
confined to some of the primary issues raised by the notoriously difficult
question "What is poetry?"
Poetry generally differs from other kinds of literature in its reliance
on the techniques of prosody and VERSIFICATION, and the term poetry is
often equated with verse. A poem, in this partial and inadequate sense,
is any metrical and rhymed composition. It is clear, however, that poetry
carries a further range of meaning because it often suggests a value
judgment:
verse may imply a mechanical jingle; poetry, a form of verbal art capable
of eliciting an emotional response from the reader. The ambiguity of the
term is allowed by its origin. Etymologically, poetry is derived from the
Greek work poiein, "to make," and the poet is therefore one who invents,
or makes things up. For the ancient Greeks this word signified any
artist--writer, painter, or musician--who made forms that did not previously
exist in nature; only in later ages did the word assume its present,
narrower meaning.
Poetry is closely allied with other forms of language but differs from
them in that it exploits the shapes and sounds of words as well as their
meaning. To the writer of scientific prose the ambiguities and connotations
of words make them an imperfect instrument; to the poet these uncertainties
are an asset to be managed and put to use. Poetic form, however mysterious
its final effect, can be investigated through the language from which it is
created. Such an inquiry can usefully include the common parts of speech as
well as the more elusive qualities of IMAGE AND IMAGERY, METAPHOR, and
SYMBOLISM. Poetry may also alter the normal relations between the words
of a prose sentence by manipulating syntax, changing their sequence and,
therefore, their meaning. Meaning itself can be modified and made sensuous
by meter and other devices, such as alliteration and assonance, that are
apprehended by the ear. The sheer sound of a poem, its rigorous control of
aural sensation, is sometimes capable of giving it an aesthetic value
independent of its meaning. An object or an action can be presented to the
reader through words whose sound seems to echo their sense--as when
Alexander Pope describes a strong man heaving an immense object:
When Ajax strives, some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours,
and the words move slow. Pope's manipulation of syntax gives the reader the
illusion of participating in the action described.
Poetry, an art form that depends on sensuous immediacy, cannot be fully
explained by abstract concepts, but it can be divided into its various
GENRES--kinds of compositions that are distinguished according to formal
characteristics. Among these genres are EPIC, a narrative of heroic actions
and events of more than personal significance; LYRIC, mellifluous verses
originally intended to be sung; and SATIRE, moral censure of evil, pretension,
or antisocial behavior. The primary genres, distinguished by Aristotle
according to their manner of presentation as epic, DRAMA, and lyric,
have in turn given rise to such other kinds of poetry as BALLAD, ELEGY,
ODE, and SONNET.
Poetry is unique among the arts in that it shares its medium, words, with
other forms of communication. The musician works with sounds, the sculptor
with stone, neither of which have any expressive value before they are
shaped into artistic forms. Words, however, have already been used, and the
poet is working, as T. S. Eliot put it, "with shabby equipment, always
deteriorating," struggling to give the elements of common speech a fresh,
unused appearance. The words of a poem, by virtue of their relation to
other words in the framework of syntax and prosody, and their function
as the product of a speaking voice, may achieve a unique meaning that is
almost independent of their dictionary sense and peculiar to the work in
which they are used. The intricate structure displayed by any successful
poem shows that poetry consists of an alliance among the resources of
language. Although a poem may be assigned to a particular genre, and its
individual devices may be explained as qualities of language such as rhythm,
it is clear that a poem is not merely the sum total of its parts and that
the nature of poetry is not the same thing as its concrete form. A poem may
have the characteristics of a genre, and display the devices of
versification, but still be dull and therefore fail to be poetry.
Classical attempts to explain the nature of poetry were made in spiritual
terms. Homer and Hesiod claimed that their writing was the result of the
inspiration of the MUSES, who were, in Greek mythology, the daughters of
the goddess of memory. Plato, the first literary critic of importance,
wrote numerous discussions of poetry, all of which describe it as the
outpouring of a supernatural force that binds the poet to the audience by
an irrational attraction. The association of poetry with madness, which has
greatly affected attempts to estimate its social value, was long current
throughout western European culture. Shakespeare's celebrated description
of poetic imagination in A Midsummer Night's Dream is characteristically
ironic in its grouping of the poet with the lunatic and the lover:
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact. . . .
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth,
from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things
unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A
local habitation and a name.
Recognition of the power of poetic imagination is made ambiguous by the
skeptical suggestion that poetry may, after all, consist of "nothing."
This attitude was already evident in the poems of Hesiod, who acknowledges
that the muses may tell lies and make them seem like truth, and is amplified
to its fullest extent by Plato, who banishes poets from his utopian state,
The REPUBLIC, on the moral grounds that poetry is a counterfeit creation
that appears to be true but merely mimics the misleading appearance of the
physical world. From the European Renaissance through the 19th-century
romantic movement the argument about the nature of poetry and its moral and
aesthetic utility revolved about the issues raised by Plato. Sir Philip
Sidney, in his Apology for Poetry (1595), saw the poetic imagination as an
afflatus that gave access to truth beyond the scope of reason, and for
Wordsworth, writing two centuries later, poetry still claims to be a realm
of knowledge quite separate from rational inquiry but no less accurate and
true: "Poetry is passion: it is the history or science of feelings."
Aristotle, unlike his teacher, Plato, was less concerned with the psychology
of poetic composition and the abstract question of what poetry is than with
pragmatic analysis of how poetry affects its audience. He explained that
poetry was the outcome of humanity's natural desire to imitate life. Plato
believed that poetry is to be valued only insofar as it imitates ideal truth;
Aristotle asserts that imitation is valuable in itself. Plato objects to
poetry because it excites emotion; Aristotle says that this has a beneficial,
cathartic effect. More important still, Aristotle rebuts Plato's stricture
that poetry is a third-hand copy of ideal truth by claiming that, in its
concern for what is universally true in human nature, it is more valuable
than other kinds of writing, such as history, which is confined to mere fact.
It was Aristotle who first expressed and discussed poetry's claim to
represent a separate reality--not a microcosm of the real world but an
independent realm subject to its own laws.
Moralists have always argued that poetry is false, and philistines have
dismissed it as useless in a practical world. Although both, from their
limited points of view, are correct, poetry was originally intended to
teach and was therefore functional. Poetry probably originated in the
magical incantations and formal storytelling of early, preliterate
societies, in which it played an important civic and religious role. All
societies once valued poets as preservers of tradition. Homer, Vergil, Ovid,
Firdawsi, and the anonymous authors of Beowulf, the Edda, and The Mahabharata
were celebrators of cultural traditions that they idealized, stressing the
connections between past and present and between humanity and the gods.
Such poetry was transmitted orally (ORAL LITERATURE), perhaps by professional
poets, and it is thought that Homer composed his poems before the invention
of a writing system. Even after the invention of writing, the Greeks
consulted Hesiod for information on agriculture, and in Roman times
Lucretius set down scientific knowledge in verse. Horace, in a classic
formulation, said that poetry should both please and instruct and could be
both beautiful and useful. The idea that the hedonistic and the practical
functions of poetry are allied was long-lived, and this notion has been
dispelled only in the 20th century. Many Renaissance humanists, such as
Sidney, regarded moral profit as the aim of poetry, and the most forceful
critic in the age of neoclassicism, Samuel Johnson, wrote that "it is always
the writer's duty to make the world better."
The legend of the poet Archilochus, whose imprecations drove his enemies to
suicide, suggests some of the functions that poetry originally served and
the reverence with which the poet was regarded. It could placate and invoke
spiritual powers in poems that were the remote ancestors of odes, hymns,
and panegyrics, and it could expel evil influences by violently abusive
verses that were the earliest satire. These functions are now so weakened
that they have virtually disappeared, but poems in praise of public acts
are still written, especially in totalitarian states, and satirists are
still capable of inducing fear and hatred. Rhythm and meter, which give
words an appeal to the ear regardless of their meaning, made poetry a useful
means of instruction. Versification was then a mnemonic device--and it
remains so in advertising jingles and in verses such as "30 days hath
September. . . ."
It seems likely that the growth of literacy reduced poetry 's didactic
purpose because that function was then assumed by prose, which has since been
regarded as a more suitable medium for instruction. Nonetheless, poetry
continued to play a public role--as panegyric, history, and satire--until
well into the 19th century in Europe, and the British monarch still appoints
a POET LAUREATE. The last major poet to believe that poetry could influence
political events was perhaps W. B. Yeats, who feared that his poems had
helped to incite the bloodshed of the Irish Rebellion. In his elegy to Yeats,
W. H. Auden expressed a contrary belief that comes closer to describing
poetry's importance in contemporary Western culture:
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making
where executives Would never want to tamper. . . .
Langston Hughes (1902-67)
, an American writer, expressed the life of a black
American in poetry, prose, and drama with an almost effortless use of the
cadences of blues and jazz. His whimsical outlook was nonetheless realistic,
and a later militancy is evident in a posthumously published collection of
poetry, The Panther and the Lash (1967). (The Bettmann Archive)
John Keats (1795-1821)
, was one of the outstanding English romantic poets.
Despite his short career, his is some of the most thematically and poetically
complex writing in the English language. (The Bettmann Archive)
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
, through his verse, criticism, translations, and
tireless efforts on behalf of other artists, became the central figure in
the European literary avant-garde during the first quarter of the 20th
century. Pound was the author of about 90 books and more than 1,500 articles,
and his influence on the development of modern literature was pervasive.
(The Bettmann Archive)
Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837)
, the greatest Russian poet of the 19th
century, established the modern Russian literary idiom in such works as
Boris Godunov (1831) and his masterpiece Eugene Onegin (1823-31). His
efforts to break with literary classicism and to present a panorama of
Russian society profoundly influenced the novels of Turgenev and Tolstoi.
(The Bettmann Archive)
As the "voice of the people," Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
, an American
poet and historian, celebrated U.S. history and the common people involved
in making it. He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize: in 1951 for Complete
Poems (1950) and in 1940 for his multivolume Abraham Lincoln: The War Years
(1939), the continuation of his monumental biography of the president.
(The Bettmann Archive)
The Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
was the leader of the Irish Literary Renaissance during the early 20th
century. Yeats's early lyrical poetry and drama drew inspiration from Irish
legend and occult learning, but his later writing became increasingly
engaged with his own time. (The Bettmann Archive)
William Blake (1757-1827)
, the first of the great English
romantic poets, proclaimed the primacy of imagination and freedom over
reason and law. (The Bettmann Archive)
English poet and novelist Robert Graves (1895-1985)
wrote more than 150 books
and offered guidance to younger poets and scholars. (The Bettmann Archive)
Dorothy Parker's (1893-1967)
terse style, acid wit, and sharp
perception won her recognition as one of the most agile critics, poets, and
short-story writers in the United States during the second quarter of the
20th century. Among her most acclaimed works are Enough Rope (1927), her
first volume of poetry, and the short story "Big Blonde," which received
the 1929 O. Henry Award. (The Bettmann Archive)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)
, an American essayist, lecturer,
and poet, began his literary career promoting transcendental thought. He
helped to start the Transcendental Club in 1836, the year in which he also
published Nature, which forms the nucleus for the ideas expressed in much of
his prose. (The Bettmann Archive)
Percy Bysshe Shelley
, one of the greatest English romantic
poets, wrote philosophical, but intensely lyrical verse. The son of a
baronet, Shelley was expelled from Oxford University. Throughout his life he
rebelled against established ideas. His works, such as "Ode to the West Wind"
and Prometheus Unbound, express his devotion to natural beauty and Platonic
ideals. (Library of Congress)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
, one of the greatest figures of
German culture, encompassed literature, science, music, and philosophy within
his work. His early poems and novels display the sensibilities characteristic
of the Sturm and Drang movement; his later works, culminating in
Faust (1808-32), superbly synthesize knowledge, philosophy, and art.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82)
was one of the most
widely read American poets of the 19th century, although today his work is
considered sentimental. He is best remembered for poems such as
"The Song of Hiawatha," "Paul Revere's Ride," and "The Wreck of the Hesperus."
(The Bettmann Archive)
John Milton (1608-74)
, an English scholar and classical poet, is portrayed
in a contemporary engraving. Milton, who is often ranked next to Shakespeare
in the English poetic hierarchy, is best known for his epic poem Paradise
Lost, which recounts humanity's fall from divine grace. (The Bettmann Archive)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)
, an English poet, photographed
in 1888, epitomized the moral and philosophical concerns of the Victorian
age in his work. His appointment as England's poet laureate in 1850 followed
his publication of In Memoriam, one of the finest elegies in English
literature. (The Bettmann Archive)
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
, an American poet, is shown here in
a photograph by G. Frank E. Pearsall taken in 1872. Whitman was the first
American poet to abandon most of the conventions of earlier poetry and
create a distinctly national idiom to address those he celebrated as the
"American masses." (The Bettmann Archive)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
, one of England's foremost
lyric poets, served as a strong link between 18th and 19th century poetry.
The birth of the romantic movement was fostered by the publication of his
Lyrical Ballads. (The Bettmann Archive)
Robert Browning (1812-89)
, whose earliest poems met with severe
criticism, finally achieved fame as a master of dramatic monologue. Browning
used this poetic device to explore the complexities of his characters.
A familiar Browning theme, humankind's noble, yet futile, quest for
perfection, is reflected in a famous line from his "Andrea delSarto,"
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,/Or what's a heaven for?"
(The Bettmann Archive)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
wrote most of his enduring
poetry during six years of close friendship with William Wordsworth.
Their collaboration resulted in the Lyrical Ballads (1798), the poetic
manifesto of the English romantic movement. (The Bettmann Archive)
One of America's most widely read and critically acclaimed poets,
Robert Frost(1874-1963)
received numerous honors for his
verse, among them four Pulitzer Prizes and two unanimous resolutions of
praise from the U.S. Senate. In 1961, at the inauguration of President
John F. Kennedy, Frost read his poem "The Gift Outright," from the
collection entitled A Witness Tree (1942). (The Bettmann Archive)
Dylan Thomas (1914-53)
, a 20th-century Welsh poet, expressed
a resilient innocence and a strenuous love of life in such poems as
"Fern Hill" and "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." Widely known for
his powerful poetry readings over BBC radio, he became a popular, if
controversial, figure. He died at the age of 39, the author of a lyrical
and poignant body of verse. (The Bettmann Archive)
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
was an 18th-century English essayist.
His importance to English prose is summarized by Samuel Johnson, who claimed,
"Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and
elegant but not ostentatious, must give up his days and nights to the volumes
of Addison." (The Bettmann Archive)
Matthew Arnold (1822-88)
, a 19th-century British poet and critic
whose writings evoke a sense of spiritual desolation, expressed concern for
what he felt to be a decline of society's values as a result of modern
industrialism. (The Bettmann Archive)
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
was a 19th-century American
journalist and romantic poet. When "Thanatopsis," his major work, was
submitted for publication, it was initially rejected by the North American
Review on the grounds that no American could have produced a work of such
sophistication. During his career as a newspaper editor, Bryant took an
active role in public affairs, speaking out against slavery and political
corruption. (The Bettmann Archive)
Robert Burns (1759-96), an 18th-century Scottish poet,
wrote in the Scottish vernacular, reflecting his peasant origins. While
editing a collection of folk music, Burns grew interested in that genre and
composed lyrics from several earlier tunes. Today Burns is remembered for
such traditional songs as "Coming Thro the Rye" and "Auld Lang Syne."
(The Bettmann Archive)
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
possessed one of the outstanding
creative minds of the 20th century. The range of his genius is indicated by
his highly regarded plays, poetry, essays, and criticism. In his later years
the French virtuoso turned his creative energies to filmmaking, especially
to the development of special effects and interior and exterior design.
(The Bettmann Archive)
Emily Dickinson (1830-86)
, one of the finest and most original
American poets of the 19th century, wrote aphoristic poetry of unusual
concentration, power, and impact. (The Bettmann Archive)
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
, an American-born English poet, critic,
playwright, and editor, was influential in the modernist movement in poetry.
He received wide recognition after publication of The Waste Land (1922),
which fused poetic traditions, posed moral questions, and combined disparate
elements of modern music and language. (The Bettmann Archive)
Allen Ginsberg (1926- )
became a prophet of the beat generation
with "Howl" (1956), an assault in verse on American materialism. A cultural
rebel, Ginsberg has proclaimed his outrage in books of poetry and in public
readings and performances. He won the National Book Award for The Fall of
America in 1974. (The Bettmann Archive)