I love poetry and have been writing it for many years. I am wondering now about the category that poetry fits into. Is it considered fiction or non-fiction? Does it depend on what it's about or is it automatically classified into fiction or non-fiction. Looking forward to your thoughts. Thanks.

It can be both. Why not? It's just a writing style, isn't it? There are a couple members on here that are really into poetry that can answer the question much better.

I generally write from personal experiences... so I would assume it's non-fiction... but would a poetry book be considered non-fiction?

Well, to be honest... I think an epic written in poetic style, if historically accurate, would need to be non-fiction.

But a book of poetry would be classified as poetry... and not non-fiction or fiction...

All this is pure conjecture for conversation. I really have no clue.

Poetry isn't either fiction or non-fiction. It doesn't really fit into any of those categories, although certain elements of a poem could be regarded as fictional or historical. For example, a poem could be based on a historical event.

Here's a definition: "literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm."

It depends on if you write

The ages came with fleeting snow,
magic's tides,
and mythril glow.

or

The Titanic sailed the ocean blue,
struck a fate that none had knew
and now we'll miss them all...

it can be either

It's just a matter of convention. Prose writing, where the print goes from margin to margin and may continue mid-sentence onto the next page, is classified as fiction or nonfiction (and then further subdivided into genres). Poetry, which takes a special arrangement on the page, also is divided into genres, but I think none of them have to do with whether the content reports real events or not. The root of the matter might be that singing developed into poetry, while storytelling developed into prose.

DWill wrote: but I think none of them have to do with whether the content reports real events or not. The root of the matter might be that singing developed into poetry, while storytelling developed into prose.

That's a bit off. Content has to do heavily with classification in the sense of the poster's question. We're talking about whether or not it's fiction or non fiction....

In the case of poetry being classified as either fiction on non-fiction content will play a major role...

poetry about unicorns is not going to make it into the non-fiction section if their was such a thing

JeremyBenson wrote:

DWill wrote: but I think none of them have to do with whether the content reports real events or not. The root of the matter might be that singing developed into poetry, while storytelling developed into prose.

That's a bit off. Content has to do heavily with classification in the sense of the poster's question. We're talking about whether or not it's fiction or non fiction....

In the case of poetry being classified as either fiction on non-fiction content will play a major role...

poetry about unicorns is not going to make it into the non-fiction section if their was such a thing

Well, my point is that we just don't see writing labeled as poetry broken down into fiction and nonfiction. It's just not the classification used, and it really wouldn't make much sense. When we tell a story from imagination and we write it down as prose, we call it fiction. If we write the same story arranged in lines or stanzas, we call it poetry. If the story happens to have been "true," we'll call the prose nonfiction, and if for some reason that true story was written in lines or stanzas, we'd still call it poetry (or maybe "verse"). But the latter case is pretty unlikely, since using a poetic approach is going to mean we want to bring out something besides the facts of a case.

So based on that reasoning (?), I think if I had to choose I'd say poetry is fiction.

DWill is right. Poetry is poetry. It's not classified as fiction or nonfiction.