As a term of
literary criticism, "occasional poetry" describes the work's purpose and the poet's relation to subject matter. It is not a
genre, but several genres originate as occasional poetry, including
epithalamia (wedding songs),
dirges or funerary poems,
paeans, and
victory odes. Occasional poems may also be composed exclusive of or within any given set of genre conventions to commemorate single events or anniversaries, such as birthdays, foundings, or dedications. Occasional poetry is often
lyric because it originates as performance, in
antiquity and into the 16th century even with musical accompaniment; at the same time, because performance implies an audience, its communal or public nature can place it in contrast with the intimacy or personal expression of
emotion often associated with the term "lyric". Occasional poetry was a significant and even characteristic form of expression in
ancient Greek and
Roman culture, and has continued to play a prominent if sometimes aesthetically debased role throughout Western literature. Poets whose body of work features occasional poetry that stands among their highest literary achievements include
Pindar,
Horace,
Ronsard,
Jonson,
Dryden,
Milton,
Goethe,
Yeats, and
Mallarmé. The occasional poem (
French ''pièce d'occasion
, German Gelegenheitsgedichte'') is also important in
Persian,
Arabic,
Chinese, and
Japanese literature, and its ubiquity among virtually all
world literatures suggests the centrality of occasional poetry in the origin and development of poetry as an
art form.
Goethe declared that "Occasional Poetry is the highest kind," and
Hegel gave it a central place in the philosophical examination of how poetry interacts with life: A high-profile example of a 21st-century occasional poem is
Elizabeth Alexander's "
Praise Song for the Day," written for
Barack Obama's 2009
US presidential inauguration, and read by the poet during the event to a television audience of around 38 million. ==See also==