Poetry is an art that appeals to our emotions. It is associated with human experiences.

Poetry is one of the most ancient and widespread of the arts. Originally fused with music in song, poetry gained independent existence in ancient times—in the Western world, as early as the classical era (6th century to 4th century BC). Where poetry exists apart from music, it has substituted the lost musical rhythms with its own purely linguistic ones. It is this rhythmic use of language that most easily distinguishes poetry from imaginative prose, the other great division of literature, and that causes poetry to be referred to as metrical writings. This interpretation does not, however, include cadenced poetry (as in the Bible) or free verse; both of these types of verse are rhythmic but not strictly metrical. Nor does it take into account the strictly oral songs of many past and present cultures. It is, however, a useful starting point for considering what is commonly meant by the word poetry