The words of poetry derived from the Greek word, ‘poiein’ means to make or to construct. According to Robert Frost, poetry is rhythmical composition of words expressing
attitude, designed to surprise and delight and to arouse an emotional response. Wordsworth in Peck and Loyle 1984: 11 states that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,
expression of emotion, and it is always concerned with ordinary human concerns, with the daily matters of one’s life.
2.5.1. Song – Poetry Connection
We know that song has some major elements, they are lyric and melody. A singer combined lyric and melody to express his feeling in term of music. In some case, lyric of the
song are adapted from a literary work like poem. For example, there is song of Bob Marley entitled War which adapted from Haile Selassie’s speech and Iwan Fals’s song entitled
Condet is adapted from poetry of Ronggo Warsito. Characteristically, lyric and melody of song are similar to stanza and rhythm of
poetry. A singer and a poet in common use selected words of their work, like song has words in the lyric and poetry has words in stanzas. In Literary Terms and Criticism 1984 by Peck
and Coyle, it explains that poetry has specific structure usually written by a poet. Peck 1984:12 states, “Most poems are written in lines of the same length; usually these lines are
arranged into the symmetrical groups we call stanzas; often the poem has a repeated rhyme pattern running through each stanza which is usually fairly conspicuous”.
The relation between song and poetry can also be proved by one kind of poetry called ballad. Peck 1984:21 states, “The traditional ballad is a song that tells a story”. The
statement proves that sometime poetry is written to be sung. Beside, lyric is known as the basic type of poetry, Peck 1984:13 says, “We can, in fact, reduce poetry to two basic types:
narrative and lyric”. A narrative poem is a poem that tells a story, the main kinds are the epic, the ballad, and the romance. The vast majority of poems are lyrics. There are poems that are
actually called lyrics such as the sonnet, the ode, and the elegy.
2.5.2. The Kind of Poetry
There are ten kinds of poetry; they are ballad, ode, elegy, pastoral, sonnet, epic, dramatic monologue, satire, confessionals, free verse, Kasim, 2007. Martha Pardede in her
book Understanding Poetry 2007 also wrote many of information about poetry explanations. The poetry has characteristic based on each kinds.
Ballad is a short narrative song preserved and transmitted orally among illiterate or semiliterate people. Some characteristics of ballad are: first, ballad focus on a single crucial
episode or situation. The ballad begins usually at a point where the action is decisively directed towards its catastrophe. The second, ballads are dramatic. We are not told things
happening, we are shown them happening. The third, ballads are impersonals. The narrator seldom allows his own subjective attitude toward the events to intrude ballads often contain
dialogues between characters. Ode is a lyric adopted from the Greek but altered greatly in form by various English
poets. It tends to be rather formal and elevated and is often to a prominent person.Ode is the most formal, ceremonious, and complexly, organized form of lyric poetry, usually of
considerable length. It is frequently the vehicle for public utterance on state occasion, such as a ruler’s birthday, accession, etc.
Elegy is the words derive from the Greek word “elegeia” which means “lament”. Elegy is formal in tone and diction; it usually contains the commemoration of the death of
actual person or the poet’s contemplation of the tragic aspects of life. Elegy is also written to express felling of sorrow or loss.
Pastoral is a type of poetry that describes rural life. It often deals with the love of shepherd and shepherdesses.
Sonnet is a poem that consists of fourteen lines. It rhyme scheme has, in practice, been widely varied. The sonnet was originally a love poem which dealt with the lover’s
sufferings and hopes. It originated in Italy and became popular in England in the Renaissance, when Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey translated and imitated the sonnets
written by Petrarch Petrarchan sonnet. From the seventeenth century onwards the sonnet was also used for other topics than love, for instance for religious experience by Donne and
Milton, reflections on art by Keats or Shelley or even the war experience by Brooke or
Owen. The sonnet uses a single stanza of usually fourteen lines and an intricate rhyme pattern.
Epic is the most ambitious kind of poetry which deals with great heroes whose action determines the fate of their nation or of mankind. Epics usually operate on a large scale, both
in length and topic, such as the founding of a nation Virgil’s Aeneid or the beginning of world history Miltons Paradise Lost, they tend to use an elevated style of language and
supernatural beings take part in the action. Dramatic monologue is a type of poetry in which a person expresses the though and
feeling which are uppermost in his mind to another person who keeps silent all the time with a view to convincing to hearer of what he thinks. It is essentially a study of character, of
mental states or moral crisis, made from inside. It is predominantly psychological, analytical, meditative, and argumentative. In a dramatic monologue, the speakers speaks and addresses
his argument to another person who generally keep mum, which infuses great dramatic quality into it.
Satire is a type of ridicule and criticism, and it can be erected against many different object universal human vices of follies, social evils or political short coming. It is often
engendered by the desire to improve society, to right a wrong. The confessional poems are basically autobiographical in nature. It is the poet
speaking specifically about himself. And free-verse it is the kinds of poetry an author doesn’t use either rhyme- scheme or metrical devices.
2.5.3. The Aspects of Poetry
