poem
Pluralpoems
- 1A literary piece written in verse, arranged in lines rather than continuous prose.
He memorized a poem for the school recital.
Her latest collection gathers poems written over two decades.
Similarverse
Note
A word that remembers poetry as craft. Through French and Latin it goes back to Greek poíēma, 'a thing made', from poiéō, 'I make', and it pushed aside the native Old English lēoþ. In this sense the verse form is what counts, whatever the subject. Sarah Glaz, writing in American Scientist in 2013, describes poems that set out to explain the mathematics of prime numbers.
- 2A piece of writing that stands within the tradition of poetry; an individual instance of poetry.
The anthology opens with a poem by an unknown medieval author.
Modern poems often abandon rhyme while keeping a poetic sensibility.
Similarverse
Note
Here the test is belonging rather than form. A piece counts as a poem because it stands in poetry's tradition, whether or not it is laid out as verse in lines. That makes it the sense to reach for when classifying writing that bends the formal rules, such as a modern poem that drops rhyme but keeps a poetic sensibility.
- 3A piece of writing that stands out from ordinary prose through the power or depth of its expression or inspiration.
His farewell speech rose, at its close, into something like a poem.
The novel's final pages read as pure poems of grief and memory.
Note
Praise as much as classification: calling writing a poem in this sense judges it rather than files it. The word can be given to a novel's closing pages or to a speech that rises at its close. Unlike the tradition-based sense, it says nothing about genre. It says only that the writing reaches past what prose usually does.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of poem apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
The word came through Middle French poème from Latin poēma, from Ancient Greek ποίημα (poíēma), which goes back to ποιέω (poiéō, "I make"). It replaced the native Old English word lēoþ.