Genre
Lyric
From Greek lyrikos: singing to the lyre. Originally performed with musical accompaniment (Sappho, Pindar). The lyric 'I' became the defining feature of Romantic and post-Romantic poetry.
Definition
A short poem expressing the personal feelings, thoughts, or meditations of a single speaker — the dominant mode of Western poetry.
Example
Shakespeare's Sonnets; Keats' Odes; Emily Dickinson's poems — all lyric in their subjective intensity.