Poetry

Poetry is a vast subject that encompasses much more than just your average "Roses are red, violets are blue" poem. Delve into the category of literature that Percy Bysshe Shelley called "a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted"; sonnets, haikus, nursery rhymes, epics, and more are included.

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rondeau

Rondeau, one of several formes fixes (“fixed forms”) in French lyric poetry and song of the 14th and 15th centuries. The full form of a rondeau consists of four stanzas. The first and last are identical;...

ballade

Ballade, one of several formes fixes (“fixed forms”) in French lyric poetry and song, cultivated particularly in the 14th and 15th centuries (compare rondeau; virelai). Strictly, the ballade consists of...

light verse

Light verse, poetry on trivial or playful themes that is written primarily to amuse and entertain and that often involves the use of nonsense and wordplay. Frequently distinguished by considerable technical...

Beowulf

Beowulf, heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. The work deals with events of the early 6th century, and, while the date of its composition...

heroic poetry

Heroic poetry, narrative verse that is elevated in mood and uses a dignified, dramatic, and formal style to describe the deeds of aristocratic warriors and rulers. It is usually composed without the aid...

Painting by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo showing crowds pulling the large wooden Trojan Horse into the city of Troy, with excited figures and ancient buildings in the background.

epic

Epic, long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds, although the term has also been loosely used to describe novels, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and motion pictures, such as Sergey Eisenstein’s...

Poetry

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s...

utopian poetry

Utopian poetry, poetry that describes a utopia or any sort of utopian ideal. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516)—the first printed work to use the term utopia, derived from the Greek words for “not” (ou) and...

metre

Metre, in poetry, the rhythmic pattern of a poetic line. Various principles, based on the natural rhythms of language, have been devised to organize poetic lines into rhythmic units. These have produced...

Learn about the love poetry written by Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa, and Lady Mary Wroth during the Renaissance

sonnet

Sonnet, fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of 14 lines that are typically five-foot iambics rhyming according to a prescribed scheme. The sonnet is unique among poetic forms in Western literature...

T.S. Eliot sits at a desk covered with papers, reaching for a document, with a typewriter and lamp in the background at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

The Waste Land

The Waste Land, long poem by American-English poet T.S. Eliot, published in 1922. It was one of the most influential works of the 20th century and a foundational work of Modernism. The Waste Land was published...

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, masterpieces of English lyric poetry, written and illustrated by William Blake. Songs of Innocence, published in 1789, was Blake’s first great demonstration of “illuminated...

Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass, collection of poetry by American author Walt Whitman, first presented as a group of 12 poems published anonymously in 1855. Whitman’s best-known work, Leaves of Grass is a landmark in...

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, poem in seven parts by Samuel Taylor Coleridge that first appeared in Lyrical Ballads, published collaboratively by Coleridge and William Wordsworth in 1798. The title...

Stone relief showing Draupadi standing at the far right beside her five husbands, the Pandavas, at the Dashavatara Temple in Deogarh, India.

Mahabharata

Mahabharata, one of the two Sanskrit epic poems of ancient India (the other being the Ramayana). The Mahabharata is an important source of information on the development of Hinduism between 400 bce and...

The Poor Fisherman, oil on canvas by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, 1881; in the Louvre, Paris.

Symbolism

Symbolism, a loosely organized literary and artistic movement that originated with a group of French poets in the late 19th century, spread to painting and the theatre, and influenced the European and...

Sixteenth-century engraving by Hieronymus Wierix depicting Homer, shown as an older man with a beard and laurel wreath, wearing a draped garment.

Odyssey: A Reader’s Guide to Homer’s Epic

The Odyssey is an epic poem in 24 books traditionally attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer. The poem is the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who wanders for 10 years (although the action of the...

rhythm

Rhythm, in poetry, the patterned recurrence, within a certain range of regularity, of specific language features, usually features of sound. Although difficult to define, rhythm is readily discriminated...

Howl

Howl, poem in three sections by Allen Ginsberg, first published in Howl and Other Poems in 1956. A “footnote” was added later. It is considered the foremost poetic expression of the Beat generation of...

The Lady of Shalott

The Lady of Shalott, narrative poem in four sections by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in 1832 and revised for his 1842 collection Poems. Typically Victorian in its exaltation of an imprisoned maiden...

Fresco by Domenico di Michelino showing Dante Alighieri in a pink robe holding a book, with scenes of Florence and symbolic landscapes behind him, located at the Duomo in Italy.

The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy, long narrative poem written in Italian circa 1308–21 by Dante. It is considered to be one of the world’s great works of literature. Divided into three major sections—Inferno, Purgatorio,...

The Raven

“The Raven” is the best-known poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1845 and collected in The Raven and Other Poems the same year. It is one of the greatest examples of American Gothic...