Introduction To Poetry: Literature 101
The Benefits Of Poems & The Warrior-Poet Ideal
To be honest, I’m not a big poetry person. But it’s important to understand the concepts behind it. Here’s why:
Poetry (“verse”) is a concise method of written expression. Certain styles conform to different sets of rules. As such, it’s a great way to flex your creative muscles. How would you do X within the context of Y? Which words have the most impact?
This is especially valuable for sales and other communication-heavy roles. I guarantee that if you write one new poem per day, you’ll improve written and verbal skills over time.
Poetry is also more aesthetic than standard writing (“prose”). The way lines and phrases are organized can be visually and audibly appealing.
I’m also a fan of the historical “warrior-poet” concept. Sun Tzu, Cao Cao, Miyamoto Musashi, Egill Skallagrímsson, Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Winston Churchill, George Patton, and other Chads. Reading and writing makes a person better in the quest for perpetual self-improvement.
Warrior classes throughout history were expected to do more than fight. Especially as war become the profession of a chosen few, and designation of nobility, like European knights and Japanese Samurai. Being a noble carried specific expectations, like participating in ceremonies, and evolved into concepts like Chivalry.
A well-rounded person should be able to dominate opponents both in physical combat and mental exercises.
Mind and body are connected.
“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.” ― Bruce Lee
Where did poetry come from?
Oral literature has existed almost since the advent of speech itself. Stories, songs, speeches, and poems were passed down from generation to generation until writing was invented. Our earliest example is the Epic Of Gilgamesh and preceding Sumerian poems. Its themes and plot points seem to have influenced Homer and Biblical stories.
Some believe that poetry was invented as a storytelling tool. If you know how one line is structured, you know how the next should go, and so on. Kind of like how “catchy” songs are easy to sing along with. (Also see: mnemonic devices.)
Ancient poets usually didn’t memorize epic poems because it’s too much content. Reciting a poem would be part improvisation. You’d follow certain story beats while using specific meter, rhythm, and diction. The combination of elements is what elevated poets above others.
What are the elements of poetry?
Meter - A line’s pattern of syllables, and potentially other factors. Repeated patterns are “feet.” For example, “Iambic pentameter,” introduced by Chaucer. Iambic is the foot (an “iamb” is a short/unstressed syllable followed by a long/stressed syllable) and “pentameter” means there are 5 feet per line. Each line typically has 10 syllables total (“decasyllabic verse”). Different numbers and variations have their own names.
Rhythm - How the meter sounds.
Diction - How the language is used. Underlying meanings, tones, grammar, etc.
Stanza - A group of lines. Small groups have names (“couplet” for two lines, “quatrain” for four lines, etc.) When it’s a whole bunch of lines, it’s a “verse paragraph.”
Rhyme scheme - If rhymes are present, this is how they’re organized. There are many many combinations here. ABAB, AABB, ABBA, ABCB, etc. For example, ABAB is common. Lines 1 and 3 rhyme with each other (A), while 2 and 4 rhyme (B). A Shakespearean sonnet goes like: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
Note that not all poems require rhymes or word-play like alliteration. It’s often about the structure and how it sounds when spoken. Or you can combine multiple choices. This is an art, after all.
What types of poetry exist?
The types of poetry are “forms.” A brief overview of the more popular forms:
Sonnet - Specifics vary by region/language. Usually a 14 line poem following a specific rhyme scheme.
Ode - A three part poem on serious subjects.
Villanelle - A 19 line poem of 5 triplets and a quatrain at the end.
Limerick - A humorous 5 line poem with 5-10 syllables per line. Usually follows the AABBA rhyme scheme.
Tanka - A 5 line poem (usually written as 1-2 sentences) with 31 syllables: 5/7/5/7/7. The haiku (5/7/5) is a version of this.
Concrete - The poem is organized visually, like ASCII art, to express shapes and concepts through typography.
Freeform/free verse/blank verse - You can do whatever you want. Critics say it’s lazy, while proponents say it’s more expressive.
Then we have various genres. This includes:
Lyric - Short personal poems typically discussing feelings and thoughts.
Epic - Lengthy narrative poems about heroes and myth.
Fable - “Mythology lite” usually discussing morals, like in Aesop’s Fables.
Satire - Pokes fun, ridicules, and/or criticizes. Often humorous social commentary.
Elegy - A poem typically composed for funerals or mourning.
Dramatic - A drama meant to be spoken or sung.
Speculative - Science fiction, fantasy, or horror poems. (Speculative Fiction is the term for novels and short stories which deal with these subjects.)
Light - Humorous and brief poems, often with a lot of wordplay.
Slam - High-octane competitive poetry, similar to rap battles.
Performance - Poems which include dance or other “performances.”
You can mix and match for interesting combinations.
Who are the most famous poets?
There’s a lot of subjectivity in what people consider “good” poetry. (Slightly) less subjective is literary impact. The most famous Western writers are Homer (8th century BC) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The history of these two men is particularly interesting because of the mystery involved. Historians don’t know if each man was actually one man, or several going by the same pen name. We won’t be going down any rabbit holes today, though.
Famous modern poets from the 1900s/2000s:
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
James Joyce (1882-1941)
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
Shel Silverstein (1930-1999)
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
Famous poets from the 1700s/1800s:
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
William Blake (1757-1827)
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Lord George Byron (1788-1824)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
John Keats (1795-1821)
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) “the founder of modern Russian literature”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) “the father of free verse”
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889)
Other famous poets include:
Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241)
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340s-1400) “the father of English literature"
John Milton (1608-1674)
Chances are, you’ve heard of several (if not most) of the people here.
One easy reference is the list of British Poet Laureates. Or you can look at the winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Run a few names through Project Gutenberg to quickly refine your tastes for free. You’ll likely be drawn to certain styles/subjects over others.
Conclusion
This should serve as a fair starting point for anyone who wants to look into poetry. If this was a college Literature class, you’d spend several hours on the above.
Your homework is to read one poem and write one poem. Both tasks should take 30 minutes at most.
As always, if you’re unsure about something, feel free to DM me on Twitter or hit up your favorite search engine. This is a brief overview of what poetry is, how it’s defined, and why it’s important. And as a brief introduction, some details aren’t here. But you don’t need much to get started.
This is a reader-supported publication. For further support of my work:
I sell physical artwork at ApolloGallery.org with more to come
You can hire me for graphic design work
Glad you wrote this. I tried to get into Poetry a few years ago but it was tough. One author/poet I can recommend is Czeslaw Milosz. He offers a fitting definition across the backdrop of Soviet Communism in Poland in The Captive Mind.
"Poetry as we have known it can be defined as the individual temperament refracted through social convention. The poetry of the New Faith can, on the contrary, be defined as social convention refracted through the individual temperament. That is why the poets who are most adapted to the new situation are those endowed with dramatic talent".
His work is more important than ever I think given the current times we live in.
Also John Keats can be recommended, purely for the fact that the SciFi epic Hyperion is modeled after his unfinished poem of the same name.