Editing Lyric poetry

{{Short description|Formal type of poetry}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2020}}
{{Literature}}
[[File:Lyric-poetry-Walker-Highsmith.jpeg|thumb|upright=1.2|''Lyric Poetry'' (1896) [[Henry Oliver Walker]], in the [[Library of Congress]]'s [[Thomas Jefferson Building]].]]

Modern '''lyric poetry''' is a formal type of [[poetry]] which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last=Scott |first=Clive
 |title=Vers Libre: The emergence of free verse in France, 1886–1914
 |year=1990
 |publisher=Clarendon Press
 |place=Oxford, UK
 |isbn=9780198151593
}}
</ref>
The term for both modern lyric poetry and modern [[song lyrics]] derives from a form of [[Ancient Greek literature]], the [[Greek lyric]], which was defined by its musical accompaniment, usually on an instrument known as a [[kithara]], a seven-stringed lyre (hence "lyric"). These three are not equivalent, though song lyrics ''are'' often in the lyric mode and [[Ancient Greek literature|Ancient Greek]] [[Greek lyric|lyric]] poetry ''was'' principally chanted verse.{{efn|
A [[kithara]] was a professional-grade, medium-voiced (‘tenor’ / ‘baritone’) instrument in the [[lyre]]-family. {{see|kithara}}
}}<ref>{{cite book
 |last=Miller
 |first=Andrew
 |year=1996
 |title=Greek Lyric: An anthology in translation
 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=80MpjrOfTH8C/books?id=80MpjrOfTH8C&pg=PR12 ''xii''&nbsp;ff]
 |publisher=Hackett Publishing
 |place=Indianapolis, IN
 |isbn=978-087220291-7
 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=80MpjrOfTH8C
 |access-date=15 November 2015
 |archive-date=17 October 2023
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231017075103/https://books.google.com/books?id=80MpjrOfTH8C
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref> 

The term owes its importance in [[literary theory]] to the division developed by [[Aristotle]] among three broad categories of poetry: lyrical, [[dramatic poetry|dramatic]], and [[epic poetry|epic]]. Lyric poetry is one of the earliest forms of literature.

==Meters==
Much lyric poetry depends on regular [[Metre (poetry)|meter]] based either on syllable or on stress – two short syllables or one long syllable typically counting as equivalent – which is required for [[song lyrics]] in order to match lyrics with interchangeable tunes that followed a standard pattern of rhythm. Although much modern lyric poetry is no longer song lyrics, the rhythmic forms have persisted without the music.

The most common meters are as follows:
* [[Iamb (foot)|Iambic]] – two [[syllables]], with the short or unstressed [[syllable]] followed by the long or stressed syllable.
* [[Trochaic]] – two syllables, with the long or stressed syllable followed by the short or unstressed syllable. In English, this metre is found almost entirely in lyric poetry.<ref>
{{cite book
 |first=Stephen |last=Adams
 |year=1997
 |title=Poetic Designs: An introduction to meters, verse forms, and figures of speech
 |page=55
 |publisher=Broadview Press
 |isbn=1-55111-129-2
}}
</ref>
* [[Pyrrhic]] – Two unstressed syllables
*[[Anapestic]] – three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed.
* [[Dactyl (poetry)|Dactylic]] – three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed.
* [[Spondaic]] – two syllables, with two successive long or stressed syllables.
Some forms have a combination of meters, often using a different meter for the [[refrain]].

==History==

===Antiquity===
[[File:Alkaios Sappho Staatliche Antikensammlungen 2416 n1.jpg|thumb|right|[[Alcaeus of Mytilene|Alcaeus]] and [[Sappho]] depicted on an [[Attica|Attic]] red-figure [[calathus (basket)|calathus]] {{circa|lk=no|470}}&nbsp;BC<ref>[[Staatliche Antikensammlungen]] (Inv. 2416)</ref>]]

====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>

====Rome====
Among the major surviving [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] poets of the classical period, only [[Catullus]] ({{lang|la|Carmina}} [[Catullus 11|11]], [[Catullus 17|17]], [[Catullus 30|30]], [[Catullus 34|34]], [[Catullus 51|51]], [[Catullus 61|61]]) and [[Horace]] (''[[Odes (Horace)|Odes]]'') wrote lyric poetry,{{cn|date=November 2023}} which was instead read or recited.{{cn|date=November 2023}} What remained were the forms, the lyric meters of the Greeks adapted to Latin. Catullus was influenced by both archaic and [[Hellenistic]] Greek verse and belonged to a group of Roman poets called the ''[[Neoteroi]]'' ("New Poets") who spurned [[epic poetry]] following the lead of [[Callimachus]]. Instead, they composed brief, highly polished poems in various thematic and metrical genres.  The Roman love elegies of [[Tibullus]], [[Propertius]], and [[Ovid]] (''[[Amores (Ovid)|Amores]]'', ''[[Heroides]]''), with their personal phrasing and feeling, may be the thematic ancestor of much medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, and modern lyric poetry, but these works were composed in [[elegiac couplets]] and so were not lyric poetry in the ancient sense.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1=Bing |first1=P.
 |display-authors=etal
 |year=1991
 |title=Games of Venus: An anthology of Greek and Roman erotic verse from Sappho to Ovid
 |place=New York, NY
 |publisher=Routledge
}}
</ref>

====China====
{{Main|Classical Chinese poetry}}
During [[Ancient China|China]]'s [[Warring States period]], the ''[[Songs of Chu]]'' collected by [[Qu Yuan]] and [[Song Yu]] defined a new form of poetry that came from the exotic [[Yangtze River|Yangtze Valley]], far from the [[Wei River|Wei]] and [[Yellow River]] homeland of the traditional four-character verses collected in the ''[[Classic of Poetry|Book of Songs]]''. The varying forms of the new ''[[Chu Ci]]'' provided more rhythm and greater latitude of expression.<ref name=Yuán-1992>
{{cite book
 |author1={{nowrap|{{lang|zh|袁行霈}} }} [Yuán Xíngpèi]
 |display-authors=etal
 |year=1992
 |script-title=zh:{{nowrap|《中国文学史》}} 
 |title=Zhōngguó Wénxué Shǐ  |language=zh
 |trans-title=A History of Chinese Literature
 |volume=1  |page=632
 |place=Beijing, CN
 |publisher={{nowrap|{{lang|zh|高等教育出版社}} }} [Gāoděng Jiàoyù Chūbǎn Shè]
 |isbn=978-704016479-4
 |url=http://courses.gxnu.edu.cn/chinese/gdwx/zgwxs.html
 |access-date=14 July 2013  |via=[[Guangxi Normal University]] (www.gxnu.edu.cn)
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131004221340/http://courses.gxnu.edu.cn/chinese/gdwx/zgwxs.html
 |archive-date=4 October 2013
 |quote=“''Historical Records: Biography of Qu Yuan Jia Shengform''” has a style of deep grief and anger. :{{sc|Chinese:}} {{nowrap|{{lang-zh|「《史记·屈原贾生列传》|labels=no|links=no}} }} {{nowrap|{{lang-zh|形成悲愤深沉之风格特征。」|labels=no|links=no}} }}}}</ref>

===Medieval verse===
Originating in 10th&nbsp;century [[Persian language|Persian]], a ''[[ghazal]]'' is a [[poetic form]] consisting of [[couplet]]s that share a [[rhyme]] and a [[refrain]]. Formally, it consists of a short lyric composed in a single meter with a single rhyme throughout. The subject is love. Notable authors include [[Hafiz Shirazi|Hafiz]], [[Amir Khusro]], [[Auhadi of Maragheh]], [[Alisher Navoi]], [[Obeid e zakani]], [[Khaqani Shirvani]], [[Anvari]], [[Farid al-Din Attar]], [[Omar Khayyam]], and [[Rudaki]]. The ''ghazal'' was introduced to European poetry in the early 19th century by the Germans [[Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel|Schlegel]], [[Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall|Von Hammer-Purgstall]], and [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]], who called Hafiz his "twin".<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1=Thym |first1=J.
 |display-authors=etal
 |date=2010
 |title=Of Poetry and Song: Approaches to the nineteenth-century lied
 |page=221
 |place=[[Rochester, New York|Rochester, NY]]
 |publisher=University of Rochester Press
}}
</ref>

Lyric in European literature of the medieval or Renaissance period means a poem written so that it could be set to music—whether or not it actually was. A poem's particular structure, function, or theme might all vary.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last=Shaw |first=Mary
 |title=The Cambridge Introduction to French Poetry
 |pages=39–40
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |place=[[Cambridge, England|Cambridge, UK]]
 |year=2003
 |isbn=0-521-00485-3
}}
</ref>
The lyric poetry of Europe in this period was created by the pioneers of courtly poetry and [[courtly love]] largely without reference to the classical past.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1=Kay |first1=S
 |display-authors=etal
 |title=A Short History of French Literature
 |pages=15–16
 |publisher=Oxford University Press
 |place=[[Oxford, England]]
 |year=2006
 |isbn=0-19-815931-5
}}
</ref>
The [[troubadors]], travelling composers and performers of songs, began to flourish towards the end of the 11th&nbsp;century and were often imitated in successive centuries. [[Trouvères]] were poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the [[Langues d'oïl|northern dialects of France]]. The first known ''trouvère'' was [[Chrétien de Troyes]] ([[fl.]]&nbsp;1160s–80s). The dominant form of German lyric poetry in the period was the ''[[minnesang]]'', "a love lyric based essentially on a fictitious relationship between a knight and his high-born lady".<ref name=Johnson-etal-2000>
{{cite book
 |first1=Johnson |last1=S.
 |display-authors=etal
 |year=2000
 |title=Medieval German Literature: A companion
 |pages=224–225
 |publisher=Routledge
 |isbn=0-415-92896-6
}}
</ref>
Initially imitating the lyrics of the French troubadours and trouvères, ''minnesang'' soon established a distinctive tradition.<ref name=Johnson-etal-2000/> There was also a large body of medieval [[Galician-Portuguese lyric]].<ref>
{{cite book
 |last=Tavani |first=Giuseppe
 |title=Trovadores e Jograis: Introdução à poesia medieval galego-portuguesa
 |publisher=Caminho
 |place=Lisbon, PT
 |year=2002
 |language=pt
}}
</ref>

[[Hebrews|Hebrew]] singer-poets of the [[Middle Ages]] included [[Yehuda Halevi]], [[Solomon ibn Gabirol]], and [[Abraham ibn Ezra]].

In Italy, [[Petrarch]] developed the [[sonnet]] form pioneered by [[Giacomo da Lentini]] and [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s ''[[Vita Nuova]]''. In 1327, according to the poet, the sight of a woman called Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the ''Rime sparse'' ("Scattered rhymes"). Later, Renaissance poets who copied Petrarch's style named this collection of 366&nbsp;poems ''[[Il Canzoniere]]'' ("The Song Book"). Laura is in many ways both the culmination of medieval [[courtly love]] poetry and the beginning of Renaissance love lyric.

A ''[[bhajan]]'' or ''[[kirtan]]'' is a [[Hindu]] [[prayer|devotional song]]. ''Bhajans'' are often simple songs in lyrical language expressing emotions of love for the [[Brahman|Divine]]. Notable authors include [[Kabir]], [[Surdas]], and [[Tulsidas]].

[[Chinese Sanqu poetry]] was a Chinese poetic genre popular from the 12th-century [[Jin Dynasty, 1115–1234|Jin Dynasty]] through to the early [[Ming Dynasty|Ming]]. Early 14th&nbsp;century [[playwright]]s like [[Ma Zhiyuan]] and [[Guan Hanqing]] were well-established writers of Sanqu. Against the usual tradition of using [[Classical Chinese]], this poetry was composed in the vernacular.{{refn|
{{nowrap|{{lang|zh|「抒情性文学…}}}}{{nowrap|{{lang|zh|的创作开创了元代理学家诗文创作的先河。」}}}}<ref name=Yuán-1992/>
}}

===16th century===
In 16th-century Britain, [[Thomas Campion]] wrote [[lute songs]] and [[Sir Philip Sidney]], [[Edmund Spenser]], and [[William Shakespeare]] popularized the [[sonnet]].

In France, [[La Pléiade]], a group including [[Pierre de Ronsard]], [[Joachim du Bellay]], and [[Jean-Antoine de Baïf]], aimed to break with earlier traditions of French poetry, particularly [[Clément Marot|Marot]] and the ''[[grands rhétoriqueurs]]'', and began imitating classical [[Ancient Greek literature|Greek]] and [[Latin literature|Roman]] forms such as the [[ode]]. Favorite poets of the school were [[Pindar]], [[Anacreon (poet)|Anacreon]], [[Alcaeus (comic poet)|Alcaeus]], [[Horace]], and [[Ovid]]. They also produced [[Petrarch]]an [[sonnet cycle]]s.

Spanish devotional poetry adapted the lyric for religious purposes. Notable examples were [[Teresa of Ávila]], [[John of the Cross]], [[Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz]], [[Garcilaso de la Vega (poet)|Garcilaso de la Vega]], [[Francisco Medrano (poet)|Francisco de Medrano]] and [[Lope de Vega]].  Although better known for his epic ''[[Os Lusíadas]]'', [[Luís de Camões]] is also considered the greatest Portuguese lyric poet of the period.

In Japan, the ''naga-uta'' ("long song") was a lyric poem popular in this era. It alternated five and seven-syllable lines and ended with an extra seven-syllable line.

===17th century===
Lyrical poetry was the dominant form of 17th&nbsp;century English poetry from [[John Donne]] to [[Andrew Marvell]].<ref name=Corns-1993>
{{cite book
 |last=Corns |first=Thomas
 |year=1993
 |title=The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell
 |page=xi
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |place=[[Cambridge, England]]
 |isbn=0-521-42309-0
}}
</ref>
The poems of this period were short. Rarely narrative, they tended towards intense expression.<ref name=Corns-1993/> Other notable poets of the era include [[Ben Jonson]], [[Robert Herrick (poet)|Robert Herrick]], [[George Herbert]], [[Aphra Behn]], [[Thomas Carew]], [[John Suckling (poet)|John Suckling]], [[Richard Lovelace (poet)|Richard Lovelace]], [[John Milton]], [[Richard Crashaw]], and [[Henry Vaughan]]. A German lyric poet of the period is [[Martin Opitz]]; in Japan, this was the era of the noted [[haiku]]-writer [[Matsuo Bashō]].

===18th century===
In the 18th century, lyric poetry declined in England and France. The atmosphere of literary discussion in the English coffeehouses and French salons was not congenial to lyric poetry.<ref>
{{cite book
 |first=Albert, Sir |last=Wilson
 |editor-first=J.O. |editor-last=Lindsay
 |title=The New Cambridge Modern History
 |page=73
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |place=[[Cambridge, England]]
 |year=1957
 |isbn=0-521-04545-2
}}
</ref>
Exceptions include the lyrics of [[Robert Burns]], [[William Cowper]], [[Thomas Gray]], and [[Oliver Goldsmith]]. German lyric poets of the period include [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], [[Novalis]], [[Friedrich Schiller]], and [[Johann Heinrich Voß]]. [[Kobayashi Issa]] was a Japanese lyric poet during this period. In Diderot's ''[[Encyclopédie]]'', Louis chevalier de Jaucourt described lyric poetry of the time as "a type of poetry totally devoted to sentiment; that's its substance, its essential object".<ref>{{cite journal
 |translator=Collaborative Translation Project
 |date=20 December 2004
 |title=Lyric Poetry
 |journal=Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert - Collaborative Translation Project
 |series=Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert
 |publisher=University of Michigan Library
 |url=http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0000.376
 |access-date=1 April 2015
 |archive-date=2 April 2015
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402190643/http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0000.376
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref>

===19th century===
[[File:Wordsworth on Helvellyn by Benjamin Robert Haydon.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Benjamin Haydon]]'s 1842 portrait of [[William Wordsworth]].]]
In Europe, the lyric emerged as the principal poetic form of the 19th&nbsp;century and came to be seen as synonymous with poetry.<ref name=Murray-2004>
{{cite book
 |first=Christopher John |last=Murray
 |year=2004
 |title=Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850
 |publisher=Taylor & Francis
 |page=700
 |isbn=1-57958-422-5
}}
</ref>
[[Romantic poetry|Romantic]] lyric poetry consisted of first-person accounts of the thoughts and feelings of a specific moment; the feelings were extreme but personal.<ref>
{{cite book
 |first=Stephen |last=Bygrave
 |year=1996
 |title=Romantic Writings
 |page=ix
 |publisher=Routledge
 |isbn=0-415-13577-X
}}
</ref>

The traditional [[sonnet]] was revived in Britain, with [[William Wordsworth]] writing more sonnets than any other British poet.<ref name=Murray-2004/> Other important Romantic lyric writers of the period include [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]], [[John Keats]], [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], and [[George Gordon, Lord Byron|Lord Byron]]. Later in the century, the [[Victorian literature|Victorian]] lyric was more linguistically self-conscious and defensive than the Romantic forms had been.<ref>
{{cite book
 |first=E. Warwick |last=Slinn
 |editor-first=Joseph |editor-last=Bristow
 |title=The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry
 |date=26 October 2000
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |page=56
 |isbn=0-521-64680-4
}}
</ref>
Such Victorian lyric poets include [[Alfred Lord Tennyson]] and [[Christina Rossetti]].

Lyric poetry was popular with the German reading public between 1830 and 1890, as shown in the number of poetry anthologies published in the period.<ref>
{{cite book
 |first1=Eda   |last1=Sagarra
 |first2=Peter |last2=Skrine
 |year=1997
 |title=A Companion to German Literature: From 1500 to the present
 |page=149
 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing
 |isbn=0-631-21595-6
}}
</ref>
According to [[Georg Lukács]], the verse of [[Joseph von Eichendorff]] exemplified the German Romantic revival of the [[folk-song]] tradition initiated by [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]], [[Johann Gottfried Herder|Herder]], and [[Achim von Arnim|Arnim]] and [[Clemens Brentano|Brentano]]'s ''[[Des Knaben Wunderhorn]]''.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last=Lukács |first=György
 |title=German Realists in the Nineteenth Century
 |page=56
 |publisher=MIT Press
 |place=[[Cambridge, Massachusetts]]
 |year=1993
 |isbn=0-262-62143-6
}}
</ref>

France also saw a revival of the lyric voice during the 19th century.<ref name=Prendergast-1990>
{{cite book
 |last=Prendergast |first=Christopher
 |year=1990
 |title=Nineteenth-Century French Poetry: Introductions to close reading
 |page=3
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |place=[[Cambridge, England]]
 |isbn=0-521-34774-2
}}
</ref>
The lyric became the dominant mode of French poetry during this period.<ref name=Prendergast-1990/>{{rp|page=15}}
For [[Walter Benjamin]], [[Charles Baudelaire]] was the last example of lyric poetry "successful on a mass scale" in Europe.<ref>
{{cite book
 |first=Pensky |last=Max
 |year=1993
 |title=Melancholy Dialectics: Walter Benjamin and the ''Play of Mourning''
 |page=155
 |publisher=[[University of Massachusetts Press]]
 |place=[[Boston, Massachusetts]]
 |isbn=1-55849-296-8
}}
</ref>

In [[Russian Empire|Russia]], [[Aleksandr Pushkin]] exemplified a rise of lyric poetry during the 18th and early 19th&nbsp;centuries.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last=Jakobson |first=Roman
 |title=Selected Writings
 |page=282
 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter
 |year=1981
 |isbn=90-279-7686-4
}}
</ref>
The Swedish "Phosphorists" were influenced by the Romantic movement and their chief poet [[Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom]] produced many lyric poems.<ref>
{{cite book
 |author1=Richardson, W.
 |display-authors=etal
 |title=Literature of the World: An introductory study'
 |page=348
 |publisher=Kessinger Publishing
 |year=2005
 |isbn=1-4179-9433-9
}}
</ref>
Italian lyric poets of the period include [[Ugo Foscolo]], [[Giacomo Leopardi]], [[Giovanni Pascoli]], and [[Gabriele D'Annunzio]]. Spanish lyric poets include [[Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer]], [[Rosalía de Castro]], and [[José de Espronceda]]. Catalan lyric poets include [[Jacint Verdaguer]], and [[Miquel Costa i Llobera]]. Japanese lyric poets include [[Taneda Santoka]], [[Masaoka Shiki]], and [[Ishikawa Takuboku]].

===20th century===
{{further|20th century lyric poetry}}In the earlier years of the 20th century rhymed lyric poetry, usually expressing the feelings of the poet, was the dominant poetic form in the United States,<ref>
{{cite book
 |last=MacGowan |first=Christopher
 |title=Twentieth-Century American Poetry
 |page=9
 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing
 |year=2004
 |isbn=0-631-22025-9
}}
</ref> Europe, and the [[British Empire|British colonies]]. The English [[Georgian poetry|Georgian poets]] and their contemporaries such as [[A. E. Housman]], [[Walter de la Mare]], and [[Edmund Blunden]] used the lyric form. The Bengali poet [[Rabindranath Tagore]] was praised by [[William Butler Yeats]] for his lyric poetry; Yeats compared him to the troubadour poets when the two met in 1912.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last=Foster |first=Robert
 |title=W.B. Yeats: A life
 |year=1998
 |page=496
 |publisher=Oxford University Press
 |place=[[Oxford, England]]
 |isbn=0-19-288085-3
}}
</ref>

The relevance and acceptability of the lyric in the modern age was, though, called into question by [[modernism|modernist]] poets such as [[Ezra Pound]], [[T. S. Eliot]], [[H.D.]], and [[William Carlos Williams]], who rejected the English lyric form of the 19th century, feeling that it relied too heavily on melodious language, rather than complexity of thought.<ref name=Beach-2003>
{{cite book
 |last=Beach |first=Christopher
 |year=2003
 |title=The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry
 |page=49
 |place=[[Cambridge, England]]
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |isbn=0-521-89149-3
}}
</ref>{{rp|page=49}}

After World War&nbsp;II, the American [[New Criticism]] returned to the lyric, advocating a poetry that made conventional use of rhyme, meter, and stanzas, and was modestly personal in the lyric tradition.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last=Fredman |first=Stephen
 |year=2005
 |title=A Concise Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry
 |page=63
 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing
 |isbn=1-4051-2002-9
}}
</ref>

Lyric poetry dealing with relationships, sex, and domestic life constituted the new mainstream of American poetry in the middle of the 20th century, following such movements as the [[confessional poets]] of the 1950s and 1960s, who included [[Sylvia Plath]] and [[Anne Sexton]].<ref name="Beach-2003" />{{rp|page=155}} the [[Black Mountain poets|Black Mountain movement]] with [[Robert Creeley]], Organic Verse represented by [[Denise Levertov]], [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69406/projective-verse Projective verse] or "open field" composition as represented by [[Charles Olson]], and also [[Language poets|Language Poetry]] which aimed for extreme minimalism along with numerous other experimental verse movements throughout the remainder of the 20th century, up into today where these questions of what constitutes poetry, lyrical or otherwise, are still being discussed but now in the context of hypertext and multimedia as it is used via the Internet.

==Footnotes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist|25em}}

==Further reading==
* {{Cite EB1911|wstitle= Lyrical Poetry | volume= 17 |last= Gosse |first= Edmund William |author-link= Edmund Gosse | pages = 180&ndash;181 |short= 1}}
* {{cite book
 |editor=Wilhelm, James J.
 |year=1990
 |title=Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An anthology
 |place=New York, NY 
 |publisher=Garland Pub.
 |isbn=0-8240-7049-6
 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rIOUgtk_DJgC 
 |via=Google Books
}}

{{Lists of poets}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lyric Poetry}}
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