Editing Lyric poetry (section)

====Greece====
{{Main|Greek lyric}}
For the [[ancient Greeks]], [[Greek lyric|lyric poetry]] had a precise technical meaning: Verse that was accompanied by a [[lyre]], [[cithara]], or [[barbitos]]. Because such works were typically sung, it was also known as melic poetry. The lyric or melic poet was distinguished from the writer of plays (although Athenian drama included choral odes, in lyric form), the writer of [[trochaic]] and [[Iambus (genre)|iambic]] verses (which were recited), the writer of [[elegy|elegies]] (accompanied by the flute, rather than the lyre) and the writer of epic.<ref>
{{cite book
 |author=Bowra, Cecil
 |year=1961
 |title=Greek Lyric Poetry: From Alcman to Simonides
 |page=3
 |place=[[Oxford, England]]
 |publisher=Oxford University Press
}}
</ref>
The scholars of [[Hellenistic]] [[Alexandria]] created a canon of [[nine lyric poets]] deemed especially worthy of critical study. These [[archaic Greece|archaic]] and classical musician-poets included [[Sappho]], [[Alcaeus of Mytilene|Alcaeus]], [[Anacreon (poet)|Anacreon]] and [[Pindar]]. Archaic lyric was characterized by strophic composition and live musical performance. Some poets, like [[Pindar]] extended the metrical forms in [[ode]]s to a triad, including [[strophe]], [[antistrophe]] (metrically identical to the strophe) and [[epode]] (whose form does ''not'' match that of the strophe).<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1=Halporn |first1=J.
 |display-authors=etal
 |year=1994
 |title=The Meters of Greek and Latin Poetry
 |page=16
 |publisher=Hackett Publishing
 |isbn=0-87220-243-7
}}
</ref>