Poetry
A calligram by Guillaume Apollinaire. These are a type of poem in which the written words are arranged in such a way to produce a visual image.
Poetry is a form of literary art which uses the aesthetic qualities of language (including music and rhythm) to evoke meanings beyond a prose paraphrase.[43] Poetry has traditionally been distinguished from prose by its being set in verse; prose is cast in sentences, poetry in lines; the syntax of prose is dictated by meaning, whereas that of poetry is held across meter or the visual aspects of the poem.[44][45] This distinction is complicated by various hybrid forms such as the prose poem[46] and prosimetrum,[47] and more generally by the fact that prose possesses rhythm.[48] Abram Lipsky refers to it as an "open secret" that "prose is not distinguished from poetry by lack of rhythm".[49]
Prior to the 19th century, poetry was commonly understood to be something set in metrical lines; accordingly, in 1658 a definition of poetry is "any kind of subject consisting of Rhythm or Verses".[43] Possibly as a result of Aristotle's influence (his Poetics), "poetry" before the 19th century was usually less a technical designation for verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art.[50] As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral tradition;[51][52] hence it constitutes the earliest example of literature.