Verse (poetry)
This article is about verse in poetry; for other meanings of the word, see Verse (disambiguation).
Verse (Latin versus, from vertere 'to turn') in poetics refers to a series of metrically structured rhythms. Printed verse is usually set in lines and is therefore also called verse lines.
The rhythmic structure, to which rhyme, assonance or alliteration may be added, is thus the main condition of verse; the regular recurrence (response) of the same rhythm in verse is called the metre (also metre), and the single repeated part of which the metre consists is the foot of the verse (corresponding approximately to the measure in music theory) or, in ancient verse theory, the metron consisting of one or two feet of verse. Rhythmic structure, verse measures and, in general, the study of structure and regularities in verse are the subject of verse theory (also metrics) and prosody.
The abstract form of the sequence of (repeated) verse elements is called verse form, whereby a distinction must be made between verse form as a designation for a certain rhythmic structure and verse form as a designation for the result of versification, the rhythmic and phonetic shaping of a text in compliance with the respective specifications applicable to verse, stanza and the poem as a whole. Larger groups of related verse forms or verse measures are sometimes also called verse genres, for example free verse or, in ancient metrics, the group of Aeolic verse measures.
The schematic representation of the verse form with the help of a suitable metrical notation is called verse scheme.
Verse vs. poem
That a literary work is written in verse, or more generally in bound speech, does not make it a poem. Rather, verse is used in all genres and forms; in particular, epic forms are spoken of as verse epic, verse novella, and verse novel.
"One should really conceive everything that must rise above the common in verse, at least initially, for the record nowhere comes into the light as it does when spoken in bound writing."
- Friedrich Schiller: Letter to Goethe, November 24, 1797
Conversely, metrical constraint is no longer a condition of the poem today. Since Klopstock dispensed with rhyme and metrical scheme in his free rhythms in the 18th century, their importance in verse has declined until free verse became the dominant verse genre in modern times. But the role of verse form has also diminished, and is now confined practically exclusively to lyric poetry; in epic and drama, on the other hand, verse has almost completely disappeared.
Features
The visual characteristic of printed verse today remains the open line case, in which each verse appears in a line. To the listener of verses, their boundary is indicated by a noticeable pause. In this respect there has always been agreement. Thus Goethe says: "If one has iambs to declaim, it is to be noted that one marks each beginning of a verse by a small, hardly noticeable pause; but the course of the declamation need not be disturbed by this." And Brecht notes, "The end of the line of verse always signifies a caesura." This acoustic structuring, and in addition the rhythmic shaping, produces a normally clear distinguishability of words formed into verse from a prose text by means of the rendition, which is clearly perceptible to the listener and deviates from natural emphasis and phrasing. Prose that approaches bound speech in this respect is referred to as rhythmic prose, prose poem, and art prose.
