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Curated category

Genres of poetry

  • Lyric poetryThe word lyric comes from the Greek kithara, a seven-stringed instrument used to accompany verse in ancient Greece. Ancient scholars defined this form as…
  • PoetryThe oldest surviving epic poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, dates from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. It was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and…
  • EpigramThe word epigram comes from the Greek term for inscription, which means to write on or to inscribe. This literary tradition began as poems carved onto votive…
  • Performance poetryOn the 23rd of June 1916, Hugo Ball stood at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. He wore a cardboard costume that forced him to be carried onto the stage.
  • Spoken wordBefore the invention of writing, a cycle of practicing, listening and memorizing shaped how each language drew on its resources of sound structure.