I begin with Verbal Expression. At the simplest level, there are two kinds: Oral Verbal Expression, or Speech, and Written Verbal Expression, or Writing. I divide the former into Declamation and Stagework, depending on the degree of physical action involved in its presentation. Declamation is that which, for practical purposes, is all speech; stagework that whose effect is seriously reduced if not acted out. Generally, declamation is performed by a single voice, stagework by more than one, but neither is an absolute requirement. As far as I can tell, there is no need for any parallel division of writing.

The Three Main Varieties of Verbal Expression

All verbal expression, oral or written, can be split into three main varieties, according to its purpose:

.......... Literature, or the use of words (predominantly) in the pursuit of Beauty

.......... Informrature, or the use of words (predominantly) in the pursuit of Truth

.......... Advocature, or the use of words (predominantly) in the pursuit of Goodness (or, more specifically, the Moral Good)

Prose and Poetry

Literature (whether oral or written) divides naturally into prose and poetry. I unradically believe that what most distinguishes poetry from prose is that poetry is intended to be read slowly, read into rather than through: connotations, sounds, rhythms, flesh, rather than an asensual focus on denotation only. I thus define it as literature that contains significant numbers of "flow-breaks." The flow-break has two main purposes: (1) to tell the aesthcipient that he is involved with poetry and should prepare his mind accordingly; and (2) to retard the aesthcipient's progress through the work so that he experiences it with maximal sensual participation.

Prose is simply literature that is not poetry.

The Flow-Break

I recognize four kinds of flow-breaks, but I'm sure others will find more. My four are: (1) the orthodox line-break, (2) the variable indentation, (3) the interior line-gap, and (4) the intra-syllabic line-break.

Any flow-break can be empty or filled--with asterisks, say, or any other kind of symbol (or spoken sound) without a clear punctuational or other semantic use.

The Orthodox Line-Break

The line-break is simply (and conventionally) any space or other block of asemantic fill that prevents a line from reaching some pre-set (loosely or precisely defined), repeating margin to the right.

The Variable Indentation

The variable indentation is any space or other block of asemantic fill that prevents a line from starting at some pre-set (loosely or precisely defined), repeating margin to the left. It is the same as a line-break except at the opposite end of a line.

The Interior Line-Gap

In written poetry, an interior line-gap is simply a block of two or more spaces or other asemantic matter within a line, spoken or written.

In oral poetry, interior line-gaps--and the other flow-breaks, as well--are pauses keeping the speaker from continuing to some pre-set stopping or starting point, such as a period, or the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence.

The Intra-Syllabic Line-Break

The third of my "flow-breaks," the intra-syllabic line-break, is confined to written poetry. Like the orthodox line-break, it occurs at the end of a line; unlike the latter, however, it can end at a pre-set margin; it interrupts flow by stopping a line in the middle of a syllable (generally but not necessarily always, without a hyphen), as in the following sentence. My i
mpression is that E.E. Cummings invented this devi
ce. Certainly he was among its first significant users.

Prose contains flow-breaks, but they are few, and predictible: the paragraphs of prose works generally begin and end with variable indentations, for instance. And interior indentations using dots are used in prose to indicate an ellipse. Poetry uses the flow-break several magnitudes of order more frequently and consequentially than prose does, though.

The Two Super-Genres

It seems to me that there are two basic genres in literature: "Narrature," and "Evocature." Since by "narrature" I mean pretty much what is meant by "narrative," my coinage is probably superfluous. I'm retaining it for now for two reasons: (1) it fits my system of neologies by ending in "ture," and (2) I think it useful to distinguish narrative-as-story from narrative-as-that-which-contains-a-story.

I define narrative rigorously as more than just events. For me, narrative consists only of those events that take place as some protagonist attempts to reach a goal--in a manner that makes the attempt to reach the goal central to the aestheriencer. The latter qualification makes the definition vulnerable to subjectivity but I see no way around that. I believe the qualification necessary to distinguish a narrative about a plant's fight to reach sunlight, and a (literary) description of a plant's growth.

The latter would be a form of evocature. Evocature seeks to evoke a mood, generally by presenting a scene or portraying a character. Events might be part of the presentation, but uncentrally. Lyric poetry is the principal kind of evocature but there are also prose poems, and those stageworks whose aim is to capture an era, or a locale, or whatever, rather than tell a story.

The Twelve Major Sub-Rubrics of Verbal Expression

It should be clear now that a literary work can be declamation, stagework or writing; prose or poetry; and narrature or evocature. There are thus twelve possible "major sub-rubrics" of literature:

..... 1. Narrational Literary Declamation in Prose--or, okay, Story-Telling

..... 2. Evocational Literary Declamation in Prose (i.e., the so-called "prose poem," declaimed), or Oral Prose Evocature

..... 3. Narrational Literary Declamation in Verse (note: I use "poetry" and "verse" interchangeably), or Oral Narrative Poetry

..... 4. Evocational Literary Declamation in Verse, or Oral Lyric Poetry

..... 5. Narrational Drama in Prose, or--because it's so dominant--just plain Drama

..... 6. Evocational Drama in Prose

..... 7. Narrational Drama in Verse, or Verse Drama

..... 8. Evocational Drama in Verse

..... 9. Narrational Literary Prose, or Prose Narrature (e.g., the novel and short story; the essay, which almost qualifies, is imformrature, not literature)

..... 10. Evocational Literary Prose (or plain Prose Evocature)

..... 11. Narrational Literary Poetry (or Narrative Poetry)

..... 12. Evocational Literary Poetry (or Lyric Poetry)

Each of these sub-rubrics contains species, and the species contain sub-species and genres--notably tragedy, comedy and melodrama in drama. I lack the space to treat these here, except in poetry--not only because it's my specialty but because I consider it the most taxonomically vexed of the main literary forms.

The Two Major Species of Poetry

There are two major species of poetry in my poetics: livenorm poetry and burstnorm poetry

I break livenorm poetry into songmode poetry and plaintext poetry

Songmode Poetry

Songmode Poetry is traditional poetry, always adhering to some auditorily-based pattern (i.e., to rhyme, alliteration, meter, or the like) significantly more than it does not.

Plaintext Poetry

Plaintext Poetry is standard free verse--i.e., verse in which the use of meter, rhyme and the like is, for most readers, too minor for the verse to seem songmode poetry; it is distinguished from the free verse used in burstnorm poetry in being textual only, and in not rebelling against any significant rules of grammar or spelling.

Burstnorm Poetry

Burstnorm Poetry is poetry that breaks significantly with the norms of conventional grammar, orthography, logic and/or expressive decorum.

There are three major kinds of burstnorm poetry:

..... (1) language poetry (poetry that significantly breaks the rules of grammar and/or spelling for expressive effect) (re-named 7 July 1998, then changed from "idiolinguistic poetry" to "language poetry" 24 May 2004)

..... (2) xenological poetry (poetry that breaks the rules of what one might call the logic of the senses by juxtaposition of incongruent imagery or the logic of narrational by jumping from event to event in a seemingly arbitrary way)
(re-named 7 July 1998)

..... (3) pluraesthetic poetry (poetry that significantly breaks the conventions of expressive decorum--by mixing expressive modalities: e.g., the verbal and the visual)

Language Poetry

There are two main kinds of language poetry:

..... (1) sprungrammar poetry, in which syntax and/or inflection are meddled with (most people understand language poetry as this kind of poetry)

..... (2) infra-verbal poetry, in which spelling is meddled with.

Xenological Poetry

There are three main kinds of xenological poetry:

..... (1) surrealistic poetry, in which incongruous images are juxtaposed

..... (2) jump-cut poetry, in which narrational sequence is meddled with.

..... (3) non-representational poetry, in which the denotations of words are to be ignored as much as possible, with a resultant emphasis on their sounds and averbal relationships with one another (as, for instance, when one word is an anagram for another), and the like.

Pluraesthetic Poetry

Pluraesthetic poetry has many sub-classes, among them:

..... (1) audio-textual poetry

............... (a) sound poetry (poetry containing auditory elements that are fused with, and as expressively consequential as, its words)

............... (b) auditorilly-enhanced poetry (poetry spoken in a manner that increases its ability to please but does not increase its core meaning; an example would be Dylan Thomas giving a reading of "Fern Hill")

............... Textual Music is sometimes described as poetry but is a form of music--music some of whose elements are textual but none of whose elements are to any significant degree words, or words whose meaning is pertinent to what the artwork is saying. It and audio-textual literature together comprise audio- textual art.

..... (2) visio-textual poetry

............... (a) visual poetry (poetry containing visual elements that are as expressively consequential as, its words)

............... (b) visually-enhanced poetry (poetry written in an elegant calligraphy, for instance, or with letters that look like trees or people or the like, as in illuminated manuscripts, or in any manner that increases the work's ability to please but does not increase its core meaning)

............... Textual Illumagery is sometimes described as poetry but is a form of illumagery--illumagery some of whose elements are textual but none of whose elements are to any significant degree words, or words whose meaning is pertinent to what the artwork is saying. It and visio-textual literature together comprise visio- textual art.

..... (3) mathematical poetry (poetry using mathematical symbols that actually carries out mathematical operations as opposed to poetry about mathematics or poetry that uses mathematical symbols decoratively.

..... (4) flow-chart poetry (poetry that uses the symbols of computer or other flow-charting in significantly expressive ways)

..... (5) performance poetry (poetry in which human physical actions are fused with, and more or less as expressively as important as, the poetry's verbal elements; it could be considered kinetic poetry or a form of visual poetry except that the human actor(s) involved are of major importance; it could also be considered drama except that it is lyrical--i.e., without a strong narrational element)

There are surely other forms of pluraesthetic poetry, and many combinations of different varieties of pluraesthetic poetry. When two or more varieties of it are combined, I term the result "compound pluraesthetic poetry." If necessary I am more precise: for example, I call some of my mathematical poems that are also visual poems, "visio-mathematical poems." Pluraesthetic poems can also be combined with idiolinguistic or surrealistic poems. In that case, I call them "compound burstnorm poems," or more exactly label them, if necessary.

At this juncture, we're still far from the final, most detailed level of classification of poetry. There is, for instance, classification by size, and by genre (or subject-matter); there are also the many shapes of poems such as the sonnet. I believe I've covered the most important classes of poetry, though. And there will be time to get to the other levels of my taxonomy later.