"Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does."
— Allen Ginsberg, from Ginsberg, A Biography
Pretty words.
No, really. That's what poetry is. Sometimes it rhymes, sometimes there are more line breaks than usual. All you really need to make a poem, though, is to put it together so it sounds good, or at least sounds the way you want it to sound. It is the favored form of revolutionaries and queens, professors and angsty teens.
Poetry is one of the oldest forms of literature, and many of the earliest tales from civilizations across the world are in some sort of poetic form.
Often overlaps with Theatre and Music. For tropes associated with poetry, see Poetry Tropes. See also Poetry Forms.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Poetic Works
- The Achilleid
- The Aeneid
- Aniara
- Anna Snegina
- archy and mehitabel
- Ariel (Plath)
- The Author's Ordeal
- Autobiography of Red
- The Ballad of Mulan
- Ballad of the Sun and Moon
- Batrachomyomachia
- The Battle of Maldon
- "The Bells (1849)"
- Beowulf
- Parts of The Book of Mormon, such as Alma chapter 36, use the poetic form known as chiasmus, where a series of ideas is presented first in order and then in reverse.
- The Bridal of Triermain
- The Bride of Corinth
- The Canterbury Tales
- Casabianca
- Casey at the Bat
- Catulli Carmen 16
- A Certain Crazy Christmas Special
- Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
- Child Ballads
- The Chronicle of Duke Erik
- Collected Poems (1921) (Edwin Arlington Robinson)
- Collected Poems (1930) (Robert Frost)
- The Courtship of Miles Standish
- "Crazy Jane (1799)"
- Creation, Man and the Messiah
- Crónicas de un gato a medianoche (some of the entries are poems)
- "The Cross Roads"
- Darkness
- Desiderata
- The Divine Comedy
- Don Juan
- Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
- "Dream-Land (1844)"
- Dream of the Rood
- Enoch Arden
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
- The Epic of Sundiata
- The Erl-King or Der Erlkönig
- The Eve of St. Agnes
- Every Thing On It
- The Faerie Queene
- Falling Up (Silverstein)
- Fantasy Fables
- The Figurehead
- Florante at Laura
- Flower Fairies
- The Foundation of S.F. Success
- A Further Range
- The Georgics
- Georgy Peorgy
- Goblin Market
- "The Ghoul (1873)"
- "The Ghoula"
- "The Ghoul and the Seraph"
- Green Eggs and Ham
- The Hangman
- Harold the Dauntless
- The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight: More Poems to Trouble Your Sleep
- Heroides
- The Highwayman (1906)
- Horror Stories
- Howl (1955)
- The Hunting of the Snark
- Ibong Adarna
- Idylls of the King
- I Just Make Them Up, See!
- In the Black Whale of Ascalon
- Jabberwocky
- John the Valiant
- The Kalevala
- Kalevipoeg
- Kubla Khan
- Krákumál
- Keep It in the Family
- Lady Clare
- The Lady of the Lake (Scott)
- The Lady of Shalott
- Lady, So Much I Have Endeared You
- The Lay of the Last Minstrel
- Leaves of Grass
- Lenore
- A Light in the Attic
- Live or Die
- The Lord of the Isles (Scott)
- The Loreley
- Manfred (sort of a poem, sort of a play, sort of a short story)
- Marmion
- Max and Moritz
- The Metamorphoses
- The Monsters: Color the Creature Book
- The Nautical Ballad of Ben Bo Bohns
- New Hampshire
- Nibelungenlied
- Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep
- Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
- One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
- On Monsieur's Departure
- Orlando Furioso
- Orlando Innamorato
- The Owl and the Nightingale
- Paradise Lost
- Parzival
- The Peony Pavilion
- The Phantom Ship (1927)
- Pippa Passes
- Poetic Edda
- Poetry Pileup
- Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty
- The Puddle Pronker
, from The Weedverse
- Punica
- Rainbow Bridge
- The Rape of the Lock
- "The Raven (1845)"
- Rejection Slips
- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
- Reynard the Fox
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- Rokeby
- Ruslan and Ludmila
- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
- Rudolph Shines Again
- The Satire of the Trades
- The Second Coming
- The Shahnameh
- Songs of Innocence and of Experience
- The Song of Roland
- The Sonneteer
- Sonnets from the Portuguese
- The Spider and the Fly
- Spoon River Anthology
- "Svetlana"
- The Tales of Ensign Stål
- The Thebaid
- The Trojan Cycle
- 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (1823)
- The Twelve
- "Ulalume"
- Ungrateful
- The Vision of Don Roderick
- The Wild Party
- The Waste Land
- "Weirditties"
- "Weirditties of Science"
- Where the Sidewalk Ends
- Who Pays the Piper?
- The Witch (1896)
- The Wreck of the Hesperus
- Zorgamazoo
Poets
- Maya Angelou
- Anna Akhmatova
- Jo Harvey Allen
- Simon Armitage
- Matthew Arnold
- Isaac Asimov
- W. H. Auden
- Graeme Base
- Matsuo Bashō
- Charles Baudelaire
- The Beat Generation
- John Betjeman
- Elizabeth Bishop
- William Blake
- Roberto Bolaño
- Bertolt Brecht
- Joseph Brodsky
- Robert Browning
- Charles Bukowski
- Robert Burns
- Michael Rosen
- Lord Byron
- Lewis Carroll
- Catullus
- Craig Charles
- Geoffrey Chaucer
- G. K. Chesterton
- John Cooper Clarke
- Paul Claudel
- Ernest Cline
- Leonard Cohen
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Jean Cocteau
- E. E. Cummings
- Mahmoud Darwish
- Emily Dickinson
- John Donne
- Annette von Droste-Hülshoff
- John Dryden
- José María Eguren
- T. S. Eliot
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Eve Ewing
- Robert Frost
- Lila Gaela
- Théophile Gautier
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Louise Glück
- Amanda Gorman
- Torrin A. Greathouse
- Thomas Hardy
- Hermann Hesse
- James Hogg
- Homer
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
- Horace
- A. E. Housman
- Ernie Hudson Jr
- Langston Hughes
- Ted Hughes
- Victor Hugo
- John Keats
- Rudyard Kipling
- Heinrich von Kleist
- Philip Larkin
- Edward Lear
- Tom Lehrer
- Giacomo Leopardi
- C. S. Lewis
- Matthew Gregory Lewis
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Federico García Lorca
- Audre Lorde
- James Clarence Mangan
- Christopher Marlowe
- Andrew Marvell
- John Milton
- Gabriela Mistral
- Ogden Nash
- Pablo Neruda
- John Henry Newman
- Ovid
- Dorothy Parker
- Pat Parker
- Banjo Paterson
- Charles Péguy
- Sylvia Plath
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Alexander Pope
- Ezra Pound
- Alexander Pushkin
- Lana Del Rey
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Christina Rossetti
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- Rumi
- Carl Sandburg
- Sappho
- Siegfried Sassoon
- Friedrich Schiller
- Walter Scott
- Gil Scott-Heron
- Dr. Seuss
- Anne Sexton
- William Shakespeare
- Ntozake Shange
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Shel Silverstein
- Clark Ashton Smith
- Patti Smith
- Vladimir Solovyov
- Snorri Sturluson
- Algernon Charles Swinburne
- Rabindranath Tagore
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- Dylan Thomas
- J. R. R. Tolkien
- Paul Verlaine
- Francois Villon
- Virgil
- Alice Walker
- Maria Elena Walsh
- Henrik Wergeland
- Phyllis Wheatley
- Edward Lucas White
- Walt Whitman
- Richard Wilbur
- Oscar Wilde
- William Carlos Williams
- William Wordsworth
- Takashi Yanase
- William Butler Yeats
