Poetry - verse

From Awe

Verse is sometimes used as a synonym for poetry. There is a difference between them, although in everyday speech many people do not distinguish between them. For students of English Literature, it may be helpful to treat

• verse as a technical term for the sorts of patterns that poetry takes
• poetry as more an aesthetic term, the name for a particular art form.

Students of Literature, on the other hand, may find themselves embroiled in a theoretical dispute about these terms.

There is an entire category in AWE relating to the techniques of verse: see category:prosody. There is also a page clarifying a related distinction between poetry and prose.