These words refer to verbal compositions that have greater intensity than prose or normal speech, a quality achieved by heightened language, imagery, rhythms or sound relationships. Poetry and verse are frequently used as complements, in which case verse indicates all such attempts at heightened effect, while poetry is reserved for works in which these attempts are successful: distilling the true poetry from the mass of verse written by Victorian poets. This use has recently been losing ground, since verse all by itself can suggest work of this sort that is written in traditional forms or using traditional methods such as rhyme and metre: often the word, unqualified, can suggest light or trivial products that make no attempt at any heightening of intensity: greeting-card verse . Poetry , by contrast, is more and more used neutrally in a generic way, depending on qualifiers for any indication of success or failure: writing voluminous amounts of both good and bad poetry in his final phase. The word still retains a positive tone when used in a wider, less exact way: a view of life touched with poetry . Here it points to an indefinable emotional intensity. As in the above examples, verse is commonly used in a collective or general sense – although in a strictly prosodic sense it may denote only one of the lines making up a stanza, e.g., there are 14 verses in a sonnet.

Doggerel refers specifically to bad verse , usually suggesting trivial, banal work full of cliches, inept images and tedious rhythms: the doggerel scribbled on the walls of public lavatories. As a pejorative hyperbole for any poetry one does not like, the word still need not impugn the writer’s attempt at intensified utterance – only his total failure to achieve it: critics who agreed that the most honoured poet of the preceding era had seldom written anything but doggerel . Jingle , by contrast, usually points to no serious attempt at intensity, but suggests instead an extreme simplicity of language coupled with singsong or monotonous rhythms. The word may have a neutral or descriptive relevance: nursery jingles . More often, the word suggests disapproval for tedious metre used to drive home an insipid or commercial message, often one set to music: advertising jingles . Rhyme once functional much like verse , referring to work done in traditional form. At one point, in fact, it could be used as a generic term for all poetry : his essay on rhyme . The word now appears odd and archaic, especially when spelt rime as of old, and would not be used except for satirical purposes: reciting his poem, "The Rime of the Elder Statesmen".

Poesy could once be used in as general a way as poetry , but with a more lyrical and approving tone. Now the word’s only use is in caustic disapproval of verse that is over-elegant, precious or genteel: his ladylike sheaf of poesy about life’s trials.

SEE narrative, slogan.