pattern poetry

Poetry in which the lines of text are used to form an image, usually one that illustrates the poem's subject or theme. A well-known example is the poem Easter Wings by the 17th-century English poet George Herbert, in which the lines are arranged to form wings.

Among the earliest surviving examples of pattern poetry are Greek poems written in the 3rd century BC, though the attempt to form verse into descriptive shapes is almost certainly an ancient practice. It became popular in the 17th century, and concrete poetry can be seen as a closely related 20th-century form.