Home › Glossary › Letter B

Body poetry

Genre
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A poetic genre linking verse to somatic experience, gesture, and voice.

Detailed Definition
Body poetry is a genre or mode that centers the human body—its form, functions, vulnerabilities, and desires—as the primary subject and source of poetic imagery; it often intersects with identity politics, trauma, sexuality, or medical discourse, using corporeal metaphors to explore lived experience and challenge cultural taboos surrounding embodiment.
Example
Example in poetry:
Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” — uses the body as a site of exploration and truth; Sharon Olds’ “The Language of the Brag” — centers childbirth and maternal body as poetic subject; Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” — intertwines body, trauma, and self-address; Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen” — examines racialized bodily experience through lyric prose-poetry.
Additional Notes
Body poetry centers corporeal experience—pain, desire, movement. Contrast with abstract or intellectual verse; often overlaps with feminist or confessional modes.
Also Known As
Somatic poetry flesh verse corporeal lyric anatomy of voice Gestural verse Gesture poem
Skip to main content