Poetry

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Poetry \Po"et*ry\, n. [OF. poeterie. See {Poet}.]
     1. The art of apprehending and interpreting ideas by the
        faculty of imagination; the art of idealizing in thought
        and in expression.
        [1913 Webster]
  


              For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all
              human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions,
              emotions, language.                   --Coleridge.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Imaginative language or composition, whether expressed
        rhythmically or in prose. Specifically: Metrical
        composition; verse; rhyme; poems collectively; as, heroic
        poetry; dramatic poetry; lyric or Pindaric poetry. "The
        planetlike music of poetry." --Sir P. Sidney.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              She taketh most delight
              In music, instruments, and poetry.    --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  poetry
       n 1: literature in metrical form [syn: {poesy}, {verse}]
       2: any communication resembling poetry in beauty or the
          evocation of feeling

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  35 Moby Thesaurus words for "poetry":
     Apollo, Apollo Musagetes, Bragi, Calliope, Castilian Spring, Erato,
     Euterpe, Helicon, Hippocrene, Muse, Parnassus, Pierian Spring,
     Pierides, Polyhymnia, afflatus, creative imagination, ease,
     elegance, facility, fire of genius, flow, fluency, grace,
     gracefulness, inspiration, metrics, poesy, poetic genius, rhyme,
     rune, smoothness, song, the Muses, verse, versification
  
  

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

  Poetry
     has been well defined as "the measured language of emotion."
     Hebrew poetry deals almost exclusively with the great question
     of man's relation to God. "Guilt, condemnation, punishment,
     pardon, redemption, repentance are the awful themes of this
     heaven-born poetry."
     
       In the Hebrew scriptures there are found three distinct kinds
     of poetry, (1) that of the Book of Job and the Song of Solomon,
     which is dramatic; (2) that of the Book of Psalms, which is
     lyrical; and (3) that of the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is
     didactic and sententious.
     
       Hebrew poetry has nothing akin to that of Western nations. It
     has neither metre nor rhyme. Its great peculiarity consists in
     the mutual correspondence of sentences or clauses, called
     parallelism, or "thought-rhyme." Various kinds of this
     parallelism have been pointed out:
     
       (1.) Synonymous or cognate parallelism, where the same idea is
     repeated in the same words (Ps. 93:3; 94:1; Prov. 6:2), or in
     different words (Ps. 22, 23, 28, 114, etc.); or where it is
     expressed in a positive form in the one clause and in a negative
     in the other (Ps. 40:12; Prov. 6:26); or where the same idea is
     expressed in three successive clauses (Ps. 40:15, 16); or in a
     double parallelism, the first and second clauses corresponding
     to the third and fourth (Isa. 9:1; 61:10, 11).
     
       (2.) Antithetic parallelism, where the idea of the second
     clause is the converse of that of the first (Ps. 20:8; 27:6, 7;
     34:11; 37:9, 17, 21, 22). This is the common form of gnomic or
     proverbial poetry. (See Prov. 10-15.)
     
       (3.) Synthetic or constructive or compound parallelism, where
     each clause or sentence contains some accessory idea enforcing
     the main idea (Ps. 19:7-10; 85:12; Job 3:3-9; Isa. 1:5-9).
     
       (4.) Introverted parallelism, in which of four clauses the
     first answers to the fourth and the second to the third (Ps.
     135:15-18; Prov. 23:15, 16), or where the second line reverses
     the order of words in the first (Ps. 86:2).
     
       Hebrew poetry sometimes assumes other forms than these. (1.)
     An alphabetical arrangement is sometimes adopted for the purpose
     of connecting clauses or sentences. Thus in the following the
     initial words of the respective verses begin with the letters of
     the alphabet in regular succession: Prov. 31:10-31; Lam. 1, 2,
     3, 4; Ps. 25, 34, 37, 145. Ps. 119 has a letter of the alphabet
     in regular order beginning every eighth verse.
     
       (2.) The repetition of the same verse or of some emphatic
     expression at intervals (Ps. 42, 107, where the refrain is in
     verses, 8, 15, 21, 31). (Comp. also Isa. 9:8-10:4; Amos 1:3, 6,
     9, 11, 13; 2:1, 4, 6.)
     
       (3.) Gradation, in which the thought of one verse is resumed
     in another (Ps. 121).
     
       Several odes of great poetical beauty are found in the
     historical books of the Old Testament, such as the song of Moses
     (Ex. 15), the song of Deborah (Judg. 5), of Hannah (1 Sam. 2),
     of Hezekiah (Isa. 38:9-20), of Habakkuk (Hab. 3), and David's
     "song of the bow" (2 Sam. 1:19-27).
     

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:

  POETRY, n.  A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the
  Magazines.