Evolution Of Poetry And Different Concepts Used In Poetry Writing

By Author: Stuart Owens
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Poetry is considered as one of the oldest forms of art and visual. Poetry exists in all forms and in all languages. The initial kind of poetry started in the form of verses. Poetry was used to narrate stories. This was appreciated by people at large and these stories sounded even more interesting when they were brought out in the form of poems. However, the ancient poetry forms differ to a large extent from the modern poems. One of the definitions explain poetry as a traditionally art form in which the language spoken by humans is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to or instead of its notional and semantic content. However, the modern form of poetry includes pictorial representations as well.
The history about how poetry forms have changed is a very interesting concept. It is believed that the oldest forms of poems were mainly narrated. Some of these poems are considered epics because it contains a lot of message and were later written. Considering the Indian literatures Ramayana and Mahabharata were brought out in the form of poems. Today, most of us have heard about these in the form of stories. These stories ...
... are available in different languages. All the people round the globe are aware of these epics.


As the years went by these poetry forms were brought out in the form of verses. These mainly depended upon the sound and pattern. They were generally rhyming and broken down into feet. A foot is composed of syllabic sounds. They had a specified length and contained stressed and unstressed syllables used. Rhymes were also a main aspect in poetry writing. There were different kinds of rhymes that were used. There were masculine and Feminine rhymes. While the masculine rhymes were identically stress and contained different consonant sounds. The feminine rhymes were composed of differing sounds with stressed syllables followed by unstressed rhyming syllables. These were also called as double rhyme. Some if the examples are arrival, revival and survival. Another form of rhyme used here is the triple rhyme. Some of the examples for triple rhymes are greenery, machinery and scenery. Apart from these there are also imperfect and slant rhymes. Some of the examples for slant rhymes are boot, foot, shoot and so on.


The later poets transitioned from metered verses to free verses. Free verses could be either short or long. It did not specify the length of a line in a poem. These were mainly written in hypertext. The pioneer of free verse was Walt Whitman. He wrote a poem called the Leaves of Grass which speaks about the different kinds of feeling that people get according to varied situations. Today, poems are being written in hypertexts with the evolution of the internet.


Even songs written in different languages can be called a poem. While most songs are rhyme and have metered verses. There are millions of songs written and sung across the globe. Most of us love to watch songs on our TV. I watch music videos on my FiOS TV most of the time. Today, there are thousands of poets spread across the world. Some of the famous poets are William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, Andre Breton, Robert Frost, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nick Flynn, Daisy Fried, John Gould Fletcher, Annie Finch, Judy Grahn, Patricia Goodricke, Adrian Greene, Ted Hughes, Robert Hayden, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Andrew Hudgins, Marilyn Hacker, Brooks Haxton, Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, Chris Jones, and Robert Lowell. Most of these poets have spent their lives writing poems. They have contributed a lot to the world through their writings. This includes some of the poems that we would have come across in our schools and colleges.

Stuart is a freelance writer who enjoys watching songs on his television powered by FiOS TV . He is inspired by one the poems written by Robert Lowell and hence wanted to share some of his thoughts about the evolution of Poems.