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 that expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in a first-person narrative.
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 professional-grade, seven-stringed lyre (hence "lyric"). These three are not equivalent, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode and Ancient Greek lyric poetry was principally chanted verse.
The term owes its importance in literary theory to the division developed by Aristotle among three broad categories of poetry: lyrical, dramatic, and epic. Lyric poetry is one of the earliest forms of literature.
Meters
Much lyric poetry depends on regular 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:
- 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.
- Pyrrhic – Two unstressed syllables
- Anapestic – three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed.
- 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
thumb|right|[[Alcaeus of Mytilene|Alcaeus and Sappho depicted on an Attic red-figure calathus BC]]
Greece
For the ancient Greeks, 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 iambic verses (which were recited), the writer of elegies (accompanied by the flute, rather than the lyre) and the writer of epic.
The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria created a canon of nine lyric poets deemed especially worthy of critical study. These archaic and classical musician-poets included Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon and Pindar. Archaic lyric was characterized by strophic composition and live musical performance. Some poets, like Pindar extended the metrical forms in odes to a triad, including strophe, antistrophe (metrically identical to the strophe) and epode (whose form does not match that of the strophe).
Rome
Among the major surviving Roman poets of the classical period, only Catullus ( 11, 17, 30, 34, 51, 61) and Horace (Odes) wrote lyric poetry, which was instead read or recited. 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, 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.
China
During 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 Valley, far from the Wei and Yellow River homeland of the traditional four-character verses collected in the Book of Songs. The varying forms of the new Chu Ci provided more rhythm and greater latitude of expression.
Medieval verse
Originating in 10th century Persian, a ghazal is a poetic form consisting of couplets 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, 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 Schlegel, Von Hammer-Purgstall, and Goethe, who called Hafiz his "twin".
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.
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.
The troubadors, travelling composers and performers of songs, began to flourish towards the end of the 11th 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 northern dialects of France. The first known trouvère was Chrétien de Troyes (fl. 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".
Initially imitating the lyrics of the French troubadours and trouvères, minnesang soon established a distinctive tradition.
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'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 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 devotional song. Bhajans are often simple songs in lyrical language expressing emotions of love for the Divine. Notable authors include Kabir, Surdas, and Tulsidas.
Chinese Sanqu poetry was a Chinese poetic genre popular from the 12th-century Jin Dynasty through to the early Ming. Early 14th century playwrights 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.