Poetry is an art form in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to or instead of its ostensible meaning. Poetry has a long history, and early attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the various uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy.Aristotle's Poetics, Heath (ed) (1997), further discussed below. Later attempts focused on the deliberate use of features such as repetition and rhyme and the emphasis on aesthetics to distinguish poetry from prose.See, for example, Kant's Critique of Judgment, discussed below. Contemporary poets, such as Dylan Thomas, often identify poetry not as a literary genre within a set of genres, but as a fundamental creative act using language.Dylan Thomas, Quite Early One Morning, discussed below.

Poetry often uses condensed forms and conventions to reinforce or expand the meaning of the underlying words or to invoke emotional or sensual experiences in the reader, as well as using devices such as assonance, alliteration and rhythm to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poetry's use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations.