What is Poetry?

        What is poetry? At the most basic level, poetry is an experience produced by two elements of language like “sense” and “sound.” The “sense” of a word is its meaning. Poetry is derive from Greek word means  an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.

        Poetry in English and other modern European languages often uses rhyme. Rhyme at the end of lines is the basis of a number of common poetic forms, such as ballads, sonnets and rhyming couplets. However, the use of rhyme is not universal. Much modern poetry, for example, avoids traditional rhyme schemes. Furthermore, Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme. In fact, rhyme did not enter European poetry at all until the High Middle Ages, when it was adopted from the Arabic language. The Arabs have always used rhymes extensively, most notably in their long, rhyming qasidas. Some classical poetry forms, such as Venpa of the Tamil language, had rigid grammars (to the point that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar), which ensured a rhythm.

        Compared with prose, poetry depends less on the linguistic units of sentences and paragraphs, and more on units of organization that are purely poetic. The typical structural elements are the line, couplet, strophe, stanza, and verse paragraph.

        Poetry is also visual, and so it’s a good idea to pay attention to how the words are assembled on the page. Our imaginations are often stirred by a poem’s visual presentation. Just like a person, poems can send all kinds of signals with their physical appearance. Their lines are all regularized and divided neatly into even stanzas. If the poem is about war, maybe it looks like a battle is going on, and the words are fighting for space. If the poem is about love, maybe the lines are spaced to appear as though they are dancing with one another. Often the appearance and meaning will be in total contrast, which is just as interesting.

http://www.poetry.org/whatis.htm

http://www.shmoop.com/poetry/how-to-read-poem/what-is-poetry.html

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
   So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare.