Poetry is the oldest literary form and the most concentrated. Where prose expands, poetry compresses - using rhythm, image, sound, and line break to wring maximum meaning from minimum language. It spans thousands of years and dozens of traditions: the epics of Homer, the sonnets of Shakespeare, the Romantics' reverence for nature, the Modernists' fragmentation, the Beats' raw energy, and today's Instagram poets and spoken-word performers. Poetry can be formal or free, devotional or political, personal or cosmic. What unites it is an attention to how language itself feels and sounds - the conviction that how something is said matters as much as what is said.