- published: 24 Mar 2013
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A verse is formally a single metrical line in a poetic composition. However, verse has come to represent any division or grouping of words in a poetic composition, which groupings traditionally having been referred to as stanzas.
The word "verse" is commonly used in lieu of "poetry" to distinguish it from prose. Where the common unit of poetry, that is, verse, is based on meter or rhyme, the common unit of prose is purely grammatical, such as a sentence or paragraph.
Rhymed verse is the most commonly used form of verse and generally has a discernible meter and an end rhyme. Example: <poem>
</poem>
Blank verse is generally identified by a regular meter, but no end rhyme. Example: <poem>
</poem>
Free verse is usually defined as having no fixed meter and no end rhyme. Although free verse may include end rhyme, it commonly does not. Example:
<poem>
</poem>
Not be confused with versus (disambiguation)
Verse may refer to:
Poetry (from the Greek poiesis — ποίησις — with a broad meaning of a "making", seen also in such terms as "hemopoiesis"; more narrowly, the making of poetry) is a form of literary art which uses the aesthetic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.
Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively-informative, prosaic forms of writing. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a fundamental creative act employing language.