Young Writers Society

I've been getting into poetry lately and I was hoping someone could clear something up for me. What is the actual difference between dramatic and lyric poetry? I read on the forum under each name that dramatic poetry "is told through the voice of a single person to the audience" and lyric poetry "expresses the wishes, the hopes, the joys, and the sorrows of the author" but I still don't fully understand. Any clarifications would really help me.

Lyric poetry is a type of poem that expresses the emotions of the author, but it can be set into a song if wanted. It can be in forms of ballads, sonnets, ballades, villanelles, minnesangs, pastourelles, canzones, and stevs. But that's getting complicated, think that if your poem has a particular form, or set of poetic rules that it follows it belongs in Lyric.

Dramatic is a simple form of verse poetry. So if you just write a poem in verse, that doesn't follow a particular set of rules and a story or point of view is expressed through the poem itself through the author's or the author's persona.

Hope that helps, if you have anymore questions feel free to give me a shout.

From my understanding, lyric poetry is more about sensations of nature, landscapes, general feelings and emotions, while dramatic poetry is about showing one person's point of view.

Don't worry about it too much, though. If you post a poem in either, it's unlikely anyone will notice that it's in the wrong forum unless you accidentally post lyrics to a song in the lyric poetry section (which you should put in the lyrics section).

^____^

Yea, no one notices anyways =P

Thank you both for taking the time to read and reply to this. Both of your explanations really cleared things up for me. I plan to continue to write poetry and post it on this site and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't breaking any rules by posting it in the wrong forum.

I'm actually against the labels here, of only dramatic and lyric. If you must represent poems, use the names as they were to provide proper context: pastoral, elegiac, didactic, lyric, dramatic, and epic (probably have the hierarchy wrong). The need for the six orders of poetry is to illustrate the gradual ascension poets of the "golden age" went through, but also the areas that still very much exist in relation to poetry. We may say that poetry is open ended now, but people still use these areas, knowingly and unknowingly. The difference is the systems of writing, technique, expectations, and tradition have been demolished as the only approved orders that existed centuries ago.

I'm not going to make a fuss over dramatic and lyric only, just provide the past a voice.

I agree with everyone. At first, when I was new here, I was confused about the same thing. I have not much to say here because everyone had said what I want to say.


Good luck,

Alicia.