“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
Writer Elizabeth Barrett Browning dedicated this iconic poem to her husband Robert Browning, but her famous sonnet could just as easily declare love for poetry itself. We can all do that March 21 on World Poetry Day.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) founded this day in 1999 to “give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements.” The group hoped to inspire the celebration of poetry all over the world, encouraging reading, writing, and teaching.
Poetry uses rhythms and imagery to elicit emotion and the imagination of the reader. Poetry can rhyme, using what are called meters of long and short syllables. Some poetry, written in what’s called “free verse,” doesn’t employ rhyme or meters. Poems are broken into stanzas, which are like paragraphs, and can be up to twelve lines long. We believe the first known poem appeared 4,000 years ago in Babylon. Today countless types of poems are available to enjoy, including haikus, limericks, sonnets, and ballads.
