Poetry is writing that works through rhythm, sound and image rather than plain explanation. Lines that stop before the edge of the page, words picked for how they land as much as for what they mean.
One piece is a poem; poetry is the whole art, and it takes no plural and no 'a' — he writes poetry, she studies poetry. The person is a poet and the adjective is poetic. Rhyme is not required, since free verse has neither rhyme nor a fixed beat and is poetry all the same. The word also escapes the page: poetry in motion describes anything done with perfect grace, and 'there is a poetry to it' means a rightness you can feel but not measure. Poetry and prose are the two halves of writing, and prose is the ordinary sentence-after-sentence kind you are reading now.
1nounpoetryThe art of writing poems, using rhythm, sound and imagery.
“He started writing poetry at fourteen and never stopped.”
2nountakenPoems taken together as a body of work.
“Her shelf holds nothing but Russian poetry in translation.”
3nounqualityA quality of grace or beauty in something that is not writing at all.
“There is a poetry in the way the old man handles the boat.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
poetry is a form of writing.
Poetry came through Middle English poetrye and Old French pöeterie from Medieval Latin poētria, from poēta, 'poet', and behind that the Ancient Greek ποιητής — which meant a maker as much as a poet. A poet was someone who made things. The word pushed out the older English name for the art, lēoþcræft, 'song-craft'.
Ancient Greek
ποιητής — poet; author; maker
Medieval Latin
poētria
Old French
pöeterie
Middle English
poetrye
English, today
poetry
Built from
From Middle English poetrye, poetrie, a borrowing from Old French pöeterie, pöetrie, from Medieval Latin poētria, from poēta (“poet”), from Ancient Greek ποιητής (“poet; author; maker”). Displaced native lēoþcræft.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA