Baroque poetry is a highly ornate, extravagant style associated especially with seventeenth-century European writing. It often uses elaborate imagery, surprising metaphors, religious intensity, sharp contrasts, and complex language to create a sense of grandeur or emotional excess.
The style values invention and verbal richness, sometimes at the cost of simplicity or directness.
It is derived from the Portuguese for imperfectly formed pearl. Baroque poetry is characterised by a highly elaborate style laced with extravagant conceits e.g. the work of the 17th century English poet Richard Crashaw.
Example
I hung my prayer like a chandelier of dew,
Each drop a small sun trembling in the dark;
My heart, a ship of candles, drifted through
The black cathedral of the sky at dusk.