In my opinion, poetry is the music of the soul. It is a way to express my feelings, thoughts, love and my faith. Writing poetry lets me reach out to others. My friends and loved ones play a major role in my writing, and writing a poem lets me express myself in ways I couldn't do in ordinary language. When I sit down to write, I close my mind to everything around me and I think about the person or the topic I want to write about. There are thousands of potential poets out there and I'm proud to be one of them. One of the best methods of showing your work is here on-line. I started out showing my work to my on-line friends, everyone seemed to like my poems, so I decided to enter some contests. I feel honored because two of my poems have been chosen to be published.

To be able to express yourself with feelings and emotions is a quality that many of us possess, and many of us take for granted. Myself included. I decided to do some research and see what I could learn about poetry. My first stop was the search engine and Internet. Webster's Dictionary. As defined by Webster's: po-et-ry: Metrical writing. Writing that formulates a concentrated, imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound and rhythm. As defined in Webster's New World Dictionary: po-et-ry: 1- The art of writing poems. 2- poems [the poetry of Keats]. 3- Rhythm, deep feelings, imagination, etc., like those of poems [the poetry of a dancer's movements].

po-em: a piece of writing having rhythm, and, often rhyme.
Usually in language that shows more imagination and deep feelings than ordinary speech.

Both sources agreed on what poetry is, but I wanted more and so I turned to "The Volume Library" [A Modern Authorative Reference for Home and School]. Now I was finding just what I was looking for. The Volume Library's definition had all the detail I was craving. po-et-ry: The earliest and most characteristic type of literature. It seeks to express action, feelings and thoughts in an imaginative way through the use of condensed, arresting and emotive language that follows a metrical or rhythmic pattern. From the most primitive to the most sophisticated societies, poetry is regarded as having an almost magical value. Poetry is often divided into three types: Dramatic, Lyric and Narrative.

Dramatic

Dramatic monologue- a form of dramatic poetry in which the story is told through the voice of a single person to an imaginary audience. The writer does not intrude to offer his comments, but allows the reader to decide what value to place on the speakers words. Robert Browning was the master of the form in "My Last Duchess" and "Fra Lippo Lippi".

Lyric Poetry

The most emotional and musical of the three divisions of poetry. A lyric expresses subjective feelings, the personal hopes, joys, sorrows and fantasies of the author. They are usually intense and comparatively short.

Narrative Poetry

1.    Poems that tell stories. There are three main classifications: Ballads, Epics and Romance 1-Ballads deal with folk legend, heroes, supernatural stories, unhappy love, murders and disasters. The grim and tragic stories bear testimony to their primitive origins, for true ballads were handed down orally from generation to generation. There were almost no written ballads before the 15th Century, but the ballads themselves are centuries older.

2.   Epics are long narrative poems celebrating the deeds of historical or legendary heroes. The ancient Greek "Illiad" and "Odyssey" of Homer, typify the ancient epic. Vergil's "Aeneid" is called the first full length literary epic by a single author since Homer. The two great literary epics of European Literature are Dante's "Divine Comedy" and Milton's "Paradise Lost". None written since then as been adjudged equal to them, but epics are still being written. Nikos Kazantzakis "The Odyssey, A Modern Sequel"(1938) is an outstanding 20th Century example.

3.   Romance is a form of vernacular story originally in verse but later in prose. Romance was developed first in France in the twelfth century and spread through Europe. Medieval Romances dealt with knights, deeds of chivalry and courtly love. They differed from earlier epics in their lack of moral grandeur and seriousness, their episodic, digressive structure and their subjectivity. Romances are often replete with magical events, faeries, dragons, wizards and enchantment. In modern fiction, novels and poems that idealize and are little concerned with realism are called Romances.

No matter the style of poetry one portrays, I believe that each poem is as individual as the poet who writes it. As for me, all of these facts and details, as interesting and intriguing as they are, my poetry is the music in my soul. 

About the author: Kathy Taylor (aka) katt_122. I make my home in Fresno, California. I am a single parent with a 16 year old still at home. I wrote poetry as a child but got away from it for many years. started writing again last year.