poetic verse
Metered literary composition
Poetic verse is language arranged in rhythmic lines, distinguished from prose by its attention to meter, sound, and visual structure on the page.
The term is somewhat redundant—verse already implies poetry—but emphasizes the formal, metrical quality: She memorized passages of poetic verse from Shakespeare.
It often suggests traditional rather than free-form poetry.
- caesuraPause within a line
- coupletTwo successive verse lines
- heroic coupletRhymed pentameter pair
- imageryVivid descriptive language
- meterDevice that measures usage
foot · enjambment · Romanticism · assonance · poetic license · rhyme · rhyme scheme · end rhyme · slant rhyme · simile · metaphor · alliteration · stanza · sonnet · syllable · quatrain · villanelle · tercet
- French MusicEdith Piaf, chanson, French jazz, French pop, Debussy
- French theaterRacine, Tartuffe, classical tragedy, Andromache, Horace
- Russian folktalesBaba Yaga, firebird, golden fish, snow maiden, chicken legs
poetic verseprose
Unversified language
prose writing · narrative prose · journalistic writing · prose fiction · essay form
poetic verseplain speech
Unembellished verbal expression
everyday language · colloquial speech · vernacular · boilerplate · common parlance