Poetry
Poetry compresses feeling and idea into few words, using rhythm, rhyme, imagery, and the sound of language itself. Reading a poem slowly, often aloud, is the surest way into it. The great traditions run from the epic verse of Homer through the sonnets of Shakespeare to the free verse of Whitman and beyond.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Recommended reading
Drama
Drama is literature written to be performed, unfolding through dialogue and stage action rather than narration. Attending to what is left unsaid between the lines often matters as much as the words themselves. From the Greek tragedies of Sophocles to the plays of Shakespeare, drama has always tested its characters through conflict.
Recommended reading
Fiction
Fiction is the art of the invented story, from the short tale to the sweeping novel. The novel in particular rose to prominence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, giving close attention to ordinary lives and inner experience. Fiction allows us to live, for a while, inside another person's choices.
Recommended reading
Nonfiction
Nonfiction tells true stories and reasoned ideas, from essays and biography to history and letters. It reaches readers through the same craft as fiction, but is bound to the facts of lived experience. The personal essay in particular has long served as a place where a writer thinks out loud in front of us.