Poetry and Prose

A. Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning in addition to, or in place of, prosaic ostensible (apparent, seeming, superficial) meaning (i.e. the ordinary intended meaning). Poetry has been traditionally distinguished from prose in terms of the fact that it is set in verse (prose being written in sentences). Poetry is cast in lines.

The syntax (rules) of prose is governed by meaning, while poetry follows criteria like metre (based on the number of syllables) or the visual structure of the poem. Before 19th century, the term ‘poetry’ referred to something set in metrical lines. Accordingly, in 1658, a definition of poetry is provided as:

any kind of subject consisting of rhythm or verses”.

Possibly, under the influence of Aristotle (as inferred from his Poetics), prior to the 19th Century, ‘poetry’ was less used as a technical term referring something written in ‘verse’. It was used to mean

a normative category of fictive (imaginative) or rhetorical art”.

In his Preface to Lyrical Ballad, Wordsworth defines poetry as

the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity”.

As a form, poetry originated far before the advent of literacy. The earliest examples ofpoetry were composed and sustained by an oral tradition. Hence, poetry constitutes the earliest example of literature.

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B. Prose

Prose is a form of language that follows ordinary sentence structure and natural speech instead of a rhythmic pattern. Unlike poetry, it is measured in sentences rather than lines. Richard Graff (a scholar in rhetoric and writing studies) classifies prose into three major categories:
     1. Novel: A long fictional prose narrative.
     2. Novella: In terms of its length Novella exists between novel and short story. It can be classified as a fictional prose normally “too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story”.
     3. Short story: It can be defined as a fictional prose narrative that is short enough to be read from beginning to end without stopping. It has its distinct size, subject matter and structure.

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