nonsense verse

Humorous or whimsical verse that features absurd characters and actions and often contains evocative but meaningless words coined for the verse. It is unlike the ritualistic gibberish of children's counting-out rhymes in that it makes such words sound purposeful. It differs from other comic verse in its resistance to any rational or allegorical interpretation. Most nonsense verse has been written for children and is modern, dating from the beginning of the 19th century. Examples include Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense (1846), Lewis Carroll's “Jabberwocky” (1871), and Hilaire Belloc's Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896). Seealso limerick.

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Poetry organized according to the cadences of speech and image patterns rather than according to a regular metrical scheme. Its rhythms are based on patterned elements such as sounds, words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, rather than on the traditional units of metrical feet (see metrical foot). Free verse thus eliminates much of the artificiality and some of the aesthetic distance of poetic expression. It became current in English poetics in the early 20th century. Seealso prosody.

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Unrhymed verse, specifically unrhymed iambic pentameter, the preeminent dramatic and narrative verse form in English. It is also the standard form for dramatic verse in Italian and German. Adapted from Greek and Latin sources, it was introduced in Italy, then in England, where in the 16th century William Shakespeare transformed blank verse into a vehicle for the greatest English dramatic poetry, and its potential for grandeur was confirmed with John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667).

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Verse may refer to:

• Verse (poetry), a line of poetry, cf. stanza
• Meter (poetry), describes the linguistic sound patterns of a verse
• The term has also come to mean poetry in general
• Blank verse is a type of poetry having regular meter but no rhyme
• Free verse is a type of poetry written without the use of strict meter or rhyme, but that is still recognizable as 'poetry'
• Chapters and verses of the Bible, a few short lines or sentences
• Ayah, each one of the 6236 verses found in the Qur'an
• Verse (popular music), roughly corresponds with a poetic stanza
• Strophic form, the musical analogue of repeated stanzas in poetry or lyrics
• Verse-chorus form, a musical form common in popular music where the chorus is highlighted
• Thirty-two-bar form, "AABA", a musical form common in popular music
• Verse protocol, a networking protocol allowing real-time communication between computer graphics software
• Verse magazine, poetry magazine published in Seattle, Washington USA
• Verse (Patricia Barber album), a (2002) album by Patricia Barber
• Verse (band), A hardcore punk band from Providence, R.I
• Verse (rapper), a British hip hop artist.
• A corruption of the word versus

Verses may also refer to:

• Verses (book), a book of poetry written by Edith Wharton
• Verses (Apallut) a (2001) album by Pamyua