The Encyclopedia entry on poetry describes it as "Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through its meaning, sound, and rhythm." The Encyclopedia goes on to explain that poetry "may be distinguished from prose by its compression, frequent use of conventions of meter and rhyme, use of the line as a formal unit, heightened vocabulary, and freedom of syntax. Its emotional content is expressed through a variety of techniques, from direct description to symbolism, including the use of metaphor and simile."

A prose poem, meanwhile, is a work in prose that has some of the technical or literary qualities of poetry (such as regular rhythm, definitely patterned structure, or emotional or imaginative heightening) but that is set on a page as prose. The form took its name from Charles Baudelaire's Petits poèmes en prose (1869; "Little Poems in Prose")."

Finally, prosody is the term for the study of the elements of language, especially meter, that contribute to rhythmic and acoustic effects in poetry. The basis of traditional prosody in English is the classification of verse according to the syllable stress of its lines. Effects such as rhyme scheme, alliteration, and assonance further influence a poem's "sound meaning." Nonmetrical prosodic study is sometimes applied to modern poetry, and visual prosody is used when verse is shaped by its typographical arrangement. Prosody also involves examining the subtleties of a poem's rhythm, its flow, the historical period to which it belongs, the poetic genre, and the poet's individual style.