Poetry definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (14)

American Heritage Dictionary (7)

noun The art or work of a poet.
noun Poems regarded as forming a division of literature.
noun The poetic works of a given author, group, nation, or kind.

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Century Dictionary (4)

That one of the fine arts which addresses itself to the feelings and the imagination by the instrumentality of musical and moving words; the art which has for its object the exciting of intellectual pleasure by means of vivid, imaginative, passionate, and inspiriting language, usually though not necessarily arranged in the form of measured verse or numbers. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. Macaulay, Milton. Poetry is itself a thing of God; He made his prophets poets; and the more We feel of poesie do we become Like God in love and power- under-makers. Bailey, Festus, Proem. The grand power of Poetry is its interpretative power, by which I mean … the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of our relations with them. M. Arnold, Maurice de Guérin. We shall hardly make our definition of poetry, considered as an imitative art, too extended if we say that it is a speaking art of which the business is to represent by means of verbal signs arranged with musical regularity everything for which verbal signs have been invented. Encyc. Brit., IX. 207.
An imaginative, artistic, and metrical collocation of words so marshaled and attuned as to excite or control the imagination and the emotions; the language of the imagination or emotions metrically expressed. In a wide sense poetry comprises whatever embodies the products of the imagination and fancy, and appeals to these powers in others, as well as to the finer emotions, the sense of ideal beauty, and the like. In this sense we speak of the poetry of motion. The essence of poetry is invention : such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. Johnson, Waller. Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre…. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement or communication of truth; the proper immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. Coleridge. No literary expression can, properly speaking, be called poetry that is not in a certain deep sense emotional whatever may be its subject matter, concrete in its method and its diction, rhythmical in movement, and artistic in form. Encyc. Brit., XIX. 257.
Composition in verse; a metrical composition; verse; poems: as, heroic poetry; lyric or dramatic poetry; a collection of poetry. Oon seyde that Omere made lyes Feyninge in his poetries. Chaucer, House of Fame, l. 1477. And this young birkie here, … will his … poetries help him here? Scott, Rob Roy, xxiii.

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He said that the collection of his poetry was among one of the most prominent collections in the world. — GotPoetry.com News
Another unique feature of his poetry is the externalisation of deepest emotions through the use of vivid imagery of Rohi (Rohi is the name used for the Southern Punjab desert which was Khowaja's abode). — ALL THINGS PAKISTAN
What I witness when reading his poetry is a level of originality and depth I've never seen before, not from a student. — Chayyei Sarah
It is the prevalent foot in English poetry, and if you examine the different poems in these volumes you will be surprised to find out how many of them are written substantially on the plan of The Daffodils In naming the meter of a poem two things are considered: First the character of the feet, and second, the number of feet. — Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7
Rhyme in French poetry is an important part of the art of verse; in English poetry, except to some extent at the time of Pope, it has been accepted as a thing rather to be disguised than accentuated. — Figures of Several Centuries

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literature · poem · romance · music · drama · beauty · poet · language · genius · history · religion · composition

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Middle English poetrie, from Old French, from Medieval Latin poētria, from Latin poēta, poet; see poet.

Century Dictionary (1)

from Middle English poetrye, poetrie, from Old French poetrie, poeterie, poterie, poetrerie = Old Italian poetria, from Middle Latin poetria, poetry (cf. Latin poetria, from Greek ποιήτρια, a poetess), from Latin poeta, a poet: see poet and -ry.

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