Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is a speaking picture. – Simonides

Though it is difficult to define poetry in few words, Robert Frost has some how been able to describe the generation of a poem. If you look for it in the lexicon it simply says that poetry is a literary composition written in verse with meaning. This definition does not describe the soul and character that poetry brings to the words.

Poetry traces its genesis as an expression of the ancient man who used this medium to hand down their religious, historical, and cultural awareness to the next generation. This was handed in the form of hymns and narrative poems. Poets have used this medium effectively to comment on almost every aspect of society and poetry can be considered as the basis of literary and artistic expression of every branch of our culture. Poets have skillfully expressed diverse topics such as emotions, comments on society, moods, deaths or numerous other themes through the medium of poetry. We see poetry in all expressions around us, be it novels, paintings, musical compositions or films. As compared to prose, poetry is smaller in size. It uses rhyme and meter very often. It is not very strictly bound by syntax and is dependant on line of content as a formal unit. There is a difference in emotion felt after reading poetry and the same content if written as prose. Story and poetry effect different emotions. The prose is derived from incident, whereas poetry is representation of feeling and or emotion. The source of the emotion in poetry is the exhibition of human sensibility; whereas in prose, the source is a series of outward circumstances. When an author combines both poetry and prose in his writings then the effect that the content has on the reader is much more. The reader is more engrossed while reading such text. The arrangement of text in any content is what differentiates a mere writer forma master storyteller or a master poet.

Poetry uses a number of techniques to act upon the emotions of the reader and make its content more catchy. Poets make use of techniques like simile and metaphor to work on the readers imagination through comparison, that is either implied or direct.

Similes: "My love is like a red, red rose."

Metaphors: "My love is a red rose."

It is an art of language where a poet uses a lot of imagery and similes, which triggers the mind of the reader to recall and combine images. It makes the reader to connect various things from past and present. It also helps the reader to make mental pictures of sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and sensations of touch. Thus, the reader becomes part of the experience that is described in the poem.

In a world full of unknowns and secrets, poetry becomes a means of survival, a way of coping with the adversities. This vent of emotions does not depend on the genre of poetry. Every genre of poetry - ballad, blank verse, dramatic monologue, elegy, epic, idyll, sonnet or an ode - has one aim to express the feelings and ideas in a powerful, passionate and effective way.

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