Definition of: poetry

(pō′it·rē) noun
1. The writing of poems; the art by which the poet projects feeling and experience onto an imaginative plane, in rhythmical words, to stir the imagination and the emotions.
2. The quality or effect of a poem manifested in any work of literature.
3. That which resembles poetry: Dancing is the poetry of motion.
4. A work or works metrically composed; verse or poems collectively; also, metrical composition in general: a book of poetry. [<OF poetrie <LL poetria <L poeta poet] Synonyms: meter, numbers, poem, poesy, rime, song, verse. In ordinary usage, poetry is both imaginative and metrical. Poetry often exists without rime; it may exist without regular meter, as in free verse; substitution may be made for meter, as in the Hebrew parallelism; poetry may be expressed in a way beautiful, lyrically comic, or sharply satiric, but it must involve, besides the artistic form, the exercise of the fancy or imagination to heighten, intensify, and integrate feeling or experience. Failing this, there may be verse, rime, and meter, but not poetry. In a very wide sense poetry may be anything rhythmical; as, the poetry of motion. There is much in literature that is beautiful and sublime in thought and artistic in construction, which is yet not poetry, in the strict sense, because quite devoid of the rhythmical element, and the patterned arrangement and economy of words; the dividing line between poetry and “the other music of prose” is hard to draw. Compare METER², SONG. Antonym: prose.