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Epic poetry, or poetry that narrates events in the life of an important hero, is the oldest form of storytelling known to man. Often, poets did not write down their work, but composed their stories in set poetic forms for easier memorization. Of these poems, many were written down for the first time only hundreds of years after they were first told. The story of Gilgamesh, Homer-s Odyssey or The Ramayana are ancient examples of this form.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle identified three kinds of poetry: the epic, the comic and the tragic. Aristotle-s ideas about poetry resurfaced again during the Renaissance in Europe and provided the aesthetic motivation for poets writing during this time. Two famous 14th century writers, Dante (The Inferno) and Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales), both used complicated rhyme schemes and rigid forms to explore various themes of morality and religion through long-form poetry.
Perhaps the most famous poet to emerge from the Renaissance and Elizabethan England is William Shakespeare. Although he often used rhyme in his plays, Shakespeare-s most important contribution to poetry is his perfection of the sonnet form. Using sixteen lines in iambic pentameter (ten syllable lines with stress on each second syllable), Shakespeare wrote countless short poems mainly about love and longing. This form heavily influenced many later British Romantic poets, most notably Lord Bryon.
Also within the Romantic Movement, Samuel Coleridge and others began to pioneer a form of poetry that abandoned rhyme in favor of blank verse while retaining structure. Moving into the 19th and 20th centuries, poets often forewent any set structure completely. Poets such as e.e. cummings and Allen Ginsberg began to experiment with punctuation, spelling, layout and grammar. Poetry was set free from form, though it remains an important, if often ignored, kind of literary expression today.