Poetry throughout history has always been divided in some way. Today, there are hundreds of forms developed around the world and each culture and region specializes in its own version of the trade. However, we can still put poetry in non-specific genres due to its general themes. Poetry enthusiasts today divide the craft into three main themes: lyrical, narrative, and dramatic.
Little is known about literature in the ancient past. However, we know that poetry has existed for thousands of years. We also have records showing the general themes of those writings. In Ancient Greece, for example, we know that the great philosopher Aristotle divided poetry into three main types; they were comedy, tragedy and epic. He claimed that the comedy was simply an imitation of what is inferior and possibly laughable. He claimed that the other two, the tragedy and the epic, were similar in that they both portray suffering and produce effects and emotions in their readers. The only difference between the two was that the epic was said to be a single-line poem, while the tragedy was in narrative form.
Today, scholars of poetry and literature believe that poetry contains three main genres. However, all three are known as lyrical, narrative, and dramatic, not comedy, tragedy, and epic. Each of these genres can be saturated with subgenres and then sub-subgenres depending on the rhyme scheme, rhythm, metrics, style, and even emotion.
Lyrical poetry are poems centered on thought and emotion. Poems can be songs, and songs can be any other genre. The main subdivisions include elegy, ode, and sonnet. Lyric poetry does not tell a story. Major lyrical poems include “Go, Lovely Rose” by Sappho and Sonnets by Shakespeare.
Narrative poetry is a poem that tells a story. Most commonly, the stories involve heroic events or are of cultural or national (or to some degrees even local) importance. Subdivisions of narrative poetry include ballads and epics. Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, Edgar Allan Poe’s “Raven” and Homer’s “Odyssey” are just some of the main narrative pieces.
Dramatic poetry is written in verse that is meant to be spoken. It usually tells a story, but it can also simply act out a situation. Most dramatic poetry is written in blank verse. Authors Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare have written important dramatic works.
Although there are three main types of poetry, each can be divided into hundreds, possibly even thousands of genres. If you haven’t found one you like, chances are you will, just keep looking!