A counting-out game is a simple game intended to select a person to be "it", often for the purpose of playing another game. These games usually require no materials, and are played with spoken words or hand gestures. The historian Henry Carrington Bolton suggested in his 1888 book "Counting Out Rhymes of Children" that the custom of counting out originated in the "superstitious practice of divination by lot."
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term only dates from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.
Rapping is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular", which is performed or chanted in a variety of ways, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The components of rap include "content", "flow", and "delivery". Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that rap is usually performed in time to an instrumental track. Rap is often associated with, and is a primary ingredient of hip-hop music, but the origins of the phenomenon predate hip-hop culture. The earliest precursor to the modern rap is the West African griot tradition, in which "oral historians", or "praise-singers", would disseminate oral traditions and genealogies, or use their formidable rhetorical techniques for gossip or to "praise or critique individuals." Griot traditions connect to rap along a lineage of Black verbal reverence that goes back to ancient Egyptian practices, through James Brown interacting with the crowd and the band between songs, to Muhammad Ali's quick-witted verbal taunts and the palpitating poems of the Last Poets. Therefore, rap lyrics and music are part of the "Black rhetorical continuum", and aim to reuse elements of past traditions while expanding upon them through "creative use of language and rhetorical styles and strategies. The person credited with originating the style of "delivering rhymes over extensive music", that would become known as rap, was Anthony "DJ Hollywood" Holloway from Harlem, New York.
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of "perfect" rhyming is consciously used for effect in the final positions of lines of poems and songs. More broadly, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word rhyme has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a rhyming couplet or nursery rhyme.
A sonnet is a poetic form which originated at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in Palermo, Sicily. The 13th century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention and the Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him is credited with its spread. The earliest sonnets, however, no longer survive in the original Sicilian dialect, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect.
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star is a popular English lullaby. The lyrics are from an early-19th-century English poem by Jane Taylor, The Star. The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection of poems by Taylor and her sister Ann. It is sung to the tune of the French melody Ah! vous dirai-je, maman, which was published in 1761 and later arranged by several composers including Mozart with Twelve Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman". The English lyrics have five stanzas, although only the first is widely known. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7666. This song is usually performed in the key of C major.
The Movement was a term coined in 1954 by J. D. Scott, literary editor of The Spectator, to describe a group of writers including Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, D. J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn and Robert Conquest. The Movement was essentially English in character as poets from other parts of the United Kingdom were not involved.
Chinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language. While this last term comprises Classical Chinese, Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Yue Chinese, and other historical and vernacular forms of the language, its poetry generally falls into one of two primary types, Classical Chinese poetry and Modern Chinese poetry.
The ballade is a form of medieval and Renaissance French poetry as well as the corresponding musical chanson form. It was one of the three formes fixes and one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and the 15th centuries.
Terza rima is a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri.
Chastúshka is a traditional type of short Russian or Ukrainian humorous folk song with high beat frequency, that consists of one four-lined couplet, full of humor, satire or irony. They were invented by Gleb Uspensky in 1889. Usually many chastushki are sung one after another. Chastushki make use of a simple rhyming scheme to convey humorous or ironic content. The singing and recitation of such rhymes were an important part of peasant popular culture both before and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
"This Be The Verse" is a lyric poem in three verses of long measure with an alternating rhyme scheme, by the English poet Philip Larkin (1922–1985). It was written around April 1971, first published in the August 1971 issue of New Humanist, and appeared in the 1974 collection High Windows.
The Petrarchan sonnet is a sonnet form not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets. Because of the structure of Italian, the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is more easily fulfilled in that language than in English. The original Italian sonnet form divides the poem's 14 lines into two parts, the first part being an octave and the second being a sestet.
Poetaster, like rhymester or versifier, is a derogatory term applied to bad or inferior poets. Specifically, poetaster has implications of unwarranted pretensions to artistic value. The word was coined in Latin by Erasmus in 1521. It was first used in English by Ben Jonson in his 1600 play Cynthia's Revels; immediately afterwards Jonson chose it as the title of his 1601 play Poetaster. In that play the "poetaster" character is a satire on John Marston, one of Jonson's rivals in the Poetomachia or War of the Theatres.
"Mr Bleaney" is a poem by British poet Philip Larkin, written in May 1955. It was first published in The Listener on 8 September 1955 and later included in Larkin's 1964 anthology The Whitsun Weddings.
The canso or canson or canzo was a song style used by the troubadours; it was, by far, the most common genre used, especially by early troubadours; only in the second half of the 13th century would its dominance be challenged by a growing number of poets writing coblas esparsas.
"The Whitsun Weddings" is one of the best known poems by British poet Philip Larkin. It was written and rewritten and finally published in the 1964 collection of poems, also called The Whitsun Weddings. It is one of three poems that Larkin wrote about train journeys.
Vietnamese poetry originated in the form of folk poetry and proverbs. Vietnamese poetic structures include six-eight, double-seven six-eight, and various styles shared with Classical Chinese poetry forms, such as are found in Tang poetry; examples include verse forms with "seven syllables each line for eight lines," "seven syllables each line for four lines", and "five syllables each line for eight lines." More recently there have been new poetry and free poetry.
