Elementary Writing

While some poets may argue passionately that poetry isn’t true poetry unless it adheres to the rules of classical form, there are times when a well-used poetry form can go stale for you. Knowing that there are many more different types of poems and poetry, may lights your fires as a reader or a poet, to get you going.

Purpose of this article is not to be the presentation of all different kinds of poetry formats (although we maintain to be a valuable resource by elaborating all Poetry Genres & Different Forms of Poems here »). Our intention is to disclose and depict those particular types of poems that, in our humble opinion, bring the most excitement and positive impulses, and at the certain point are exotic by their form or the origin.

TwiHaiku

TwiHaiku, Twitter Haiku or Twitter Poetry – is a novel form of short verse poetry that unifies genuine virtues of traditional Haiku (brevity, point to an actual, lived experience, evoking deep feelings in the reader..) with simple, straightforward purpose and interface of Twitter application.

You don’t have to be a writer to write TwiHaiku

Although twiHaiku does not restricts its form to any particular set of rules, and you do not have to be a poet to write it, it strives to convey the significance of the poetic experience in expressing your genuine thoughts and feelings, in accordance with the particular object, event or phenomenon.

Early wake up.
Strong about life,
strong about love,
strong about people.
Only too weak about my baby girl.

One may ask what separates a TwiHaiku from Haiku or other short, light verse. TwiHaiku is a poetry for today and our fast-paced lifestyles. Starting from the simple Twitter question: “What are you doing?”, the reader and the writer within are enticed to get involved, to share with the community their sincere attitude about world that surrounds us, with the perception of what is occurring at the moment, concisely and without embellishment.

TwiHaiku about twiHaiku

The butterfly in the concrete city of Eden.
So fragile and so beautiful.
Silent cry that you follow instinctively,
is the kiss of salvation.

TwiHaiku official website aims to collect and publish quality original short poetry, which moderated selection of best twiHaiku poems is available at TwiHaiku Twitter account page for immediate subscription.

Acrostic

Acrostic poems are fun to write. You can
Create your own poem by using the simple
Rules found below.
Others and many will enjoy reading your poem and
Seeing your illustration on the bulletin board.
These type of poems are different because rhyming
Is not important.
Choose your words wisely.

Did you know that The Dutch national anthem (The William) is an acrostic! The first letters of its fifteen stanzas spell WILLEM VAN NASSOV, (one of the hereditary titles of William of Orange), defining the main structural characteristic of the acrostic poetic form.

The term Acrostic is derived from the Greek words akros, “at the end,” and stichos, “line.” , and it was first applied to the prophecies of the Erythraean Sibyl, which were written on leaves and arranged so that the initial letters of the leaves always formed a word.

Probably the most famous acrostic was made on the Greek for Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior:

Iesous Christos, Theou Uios, Soter

ch and th being each one letter in Greek The initials spell ichthus, Greek for fish; hence the frequent use of the fish by early Christians as a symbol for Jesus.

This type of poems were common among the Greeks of the Alexandrine period as well as with the Latin playwrights Ennuis and Plautus, and we may find some reflections of this ancient heretage in work of famous modern authors like Vladimir Nabokov (in its story “The Vane Sisters“), Lewis Carrol (the final chapter if its “Through the Looking-Glass“) or Edgar Allan Poe in the poem entitled simply “An Acrostic”:

An ACROSTIC by Edgar Allan Poe

Elizabeth it is in vain you say
“Love not” — thou sayest it in so sweet a way:
In vain those words from thee or L. E. L.
Zantippe’s talents had enforced so well:
Ah! if that language from thy heart arise,
Breathe it less gently forth — and veil thine eyes.
Endymion, recollect, when Luna tried
To cure his love — was cured of all beside —
His folly — pride — and passion — for he died.

In this poem (just one of several acrostics Poe wrote for the amusement of female admirers), Zantippe is actually Xanthippe, the wife of the famous Greek philosopher Socrates, that was known for her quick and violent temper.

Double Acrostic

There can be much more complex acrostics involving for example double and triple acrostics, that occupy an important niche in the history of word puzzles, for it is generally recognized that they were the predecessors to the crossword puzzle.

Probably invented in the 1850’s, the double acrostic was a fad in the latter part of the 19th century. Queen Victoria was believed to be very fond of the double acrostic which, by this time, had evolved from a verse-form into a type of puzzle. This acrostic was supposedly written by her royal hand:

A city in Italy A river in Germany A town in the United States A town in North America A town in Holland The Turkish name of Constantinople A town in Bothnia A city in Greece A circle on the globe

NapleS ElbE WashingtoN CincinnatI AmsterdaM StambouL TorneA LepantO EcliptiC

Triple Acrostic

Type of poems in which the first, middle, and last letters of each line spell out the same word or a phrase (in our next example, the name Chantell) in one or a both (vertical) directions. A bit of a challenge to write, but of course it is lots of fun and worth the effort.

CHANTELL by Dave D.

Chantell is full of graCe, a rainbow arC
Her heart radiates tHe essence of birtH
Always looking to cAre, gorgeous ariA
Never has one beeN so helpful and fuN
Tellingly soulful, witTy, and our delighT
Eternally eloquent, Evanescent dovE
Loving, lovely, intelLigent, and surreaL
Listen to her bell toLl, a distant peaL

How to recognize a good acrostic poem? Apart of an imperative of being the great reading experience, good acrostic poems succeed in telling a story that is intriguing and usually a bit humorous at the same time, within the confines of the form.

Weather you are writer or just a fan of poetry, you may find acrostic a great fun to write. It is simple and can be practiced on that train or bus ride to work when we don’t have anything better to do than look out the window. It also reeves up your mind for the day ahead.

You may find more interesting details about this form of poetry here: Acrostic Poems

Haiku

Japan’s most popular unrhymed poetic form, The Haiku is just a tiny poem, “the size of your breath”, that glorifies the importance of the poet’s first impression, just as it was, of subjects taken from daily life, and of local color to create freshness. It traditionally consists of three lines. The first line contains five syllables, the second line contains seven, and the last line five. The traditional subject-matter is a description of a location, natural phenomona, or wildlife.

The ocean waves crash,
As a storm brews in the sky,
Mad mother nature

The Haiku originated in Japan and its name is generally translated as “good words.” One of the first Japanese writers who practiced the Traditional Haiku specific form was Basho, Matsuo. (1644-1694). The name Basho (banana tree) is a sobriquet he adopted around 1681 after moving into a hut with a banana tree alongside. During the years, Basho made many travels through Japan, and one of the most famous went to the north, where he wrote Oku No Hosomichi (1694). On his last trip, he died in Osaka, and his last haiku indicates that he was still thinking of traveling and writing poetry as he lay dying:

Fallen sick on a journey,
In dreams I run wildly
Over a withered moor.

by Matsuo Basho

The Modern Haiku derives from the haikai (a linked-verse poem) which was created by a group of poets as a long series of small stanzas. The first stanza, which was called the hokku (”starting verse”), set the tone for the rest of the poetic chain, and thus it enjoyed a privileged position in haikai poetry. It was not uncommon for a poet to compose a hokku by itself without following up with the rest of the chain.

Largely through the efforts of Masaoka Shiki (the famous Japanese author, poet, literary critic, and journalist), this independence was formally established in the 1890s through the creation of the term haiku. This new form of poetry was to be written, read and understood as an independent poem, complete in itself, rather than part of a longer chain.

Few great examples of modern Haiku by outstanding Japanese haiku masters:

Sick and feverish
Glimpse of cherry blossoms
Still shivering.

by Akutagawa, Ryunosuke. (1892-1927)

From a bathing tub
I throw water into the lake -
slight muddiness appears.

by Kawahigashi, Hekigodo. (1873-1937)

First autumn morning:
the mirror I stare into
shows my father’s face.

by Murakami, Kijo. (1865-1938)

American Haiku is a short form that evolved from the Japanese Haiku form. There are many different types of poems in American Haiku sub-genre, ranging from the simple 5-7-5 style taught in most grade schools, to more complex styles that not only consider every single element to be important, but also demand a certain type of punctuation.

they’ve gone…
where the beach umbrella was
the sand not quite so hot

by Lindsay Dhugal

Faceless, just numbered.
Lone pixel in the bitmap-
I, anonymous.

by Alexey V. Andeyev

Many of the thousands of poets outside Japan studying and writing this brief form in English and other languages are becoming aware that it will be an accepted form of poetry for time to come.

You may find more interesting details about this form of poetry here: Haiku Poems

Limerick

“There are three distinct types of limericks: Limericks to be told when ladies are present; limericks to be told when ladies are absent but clergymen are present–and LIMERICKS”.

Definition of Limerick by Don Marquis

The limerick, has been and probably always will be “an indecent verse-form”. Any nonsense poem that lacks five lines, thirteen metric feet, or the aabba rhyme pattern is simply not a limerick. It might be a sing-song or a la-de-da, but it’s not a limerick.

There ONCE was an OLD man from WHEEL-ing
Who HAD a pe-CUL-i-ar FEEL-ing
Said the SIGN on the DOOR
Please don’t SPIT on the FLOOR —
He JUMPED up and SPAT on the CEIL-ing.

The first, second, and fifth lines are trimeter, while the third and fourth are dimeter. Often the third and fourth lines are printed as a single line with internal rhyme.

The metric feet MUST be anapests ( da da DUM ) although the leading foot of each line may be an iamb ( da DUM) and the last foot of each line may have a trailing unaccented syllable ( da da DUM da). If you can’t sound out the da-da-DUMs, no Limerick involved – Sorry.

A mosquito was heard to complain,
‘A chemist has poisoned my brain!’
The cause of his sorrow
was paradichloro-
triphenyldichloroethane.

The simplicity of the limerick quite possibly accounts for its extreme longevity. Variants of this form dating as far back as the fourteenth century are found in English nursery rhymes and animal-warning poems such as “The lion is wondirliche strong”. Since then, the form has appeared sporadically throughout the history of the English language, from the bellowing songs of half-naked street beggars during the sixteenth century to the drinking songs of inebriated pub-crawlers in the seventeenth century.

The term limerick itself has its apocryphal origins in the refrain “Will you come up to Limerick,” a now-forgotten tavern chorus from the Irish town of the same name.

Despite its popularity in pubs and taverns, formal poets were familiar with the limerick; Shakespeare employed the form in several of his plays, King Lear and Othello. However, one does not need the talent of Shakespeare to compose a limerick, but merely a sense of humor.

The reprinting of Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense in 1863 inadvertently created the English limerick fad. The English humor magazine Punch, inspired by Lear’s book, began to publicize the “new” form within its pages, and thus began the limerick craze. In about 1870, some forty years after the original publication, A Book of Nonsense was re-published in an edition with color illustrations. In all likelihood Edward Lear colored them himself.

The limerick has refused, and still refuses to die, despite its curious role as the vehicle of cultivated, if unrepressed, sexual humor in the English language.

Different Types of Poems – Instead of the conclusions

They are known for their poetry based on love. Their famous love poems are masterpieces and treasured by posterity. We demystifies the backdrop of some of their most referenced works, by telling the story that led to their creation.

Following the sense of artistic reality, let’s have a glance at the heart and the mindset of the famous poets, at the period of creation of some of the most romantic lyrics of all time. Just to find out that the supporting stories are equally fascinating and intriguing as the poems inspired by them.

Three the Most Famous Love Poems – Background Stories

3. | She Walks In Beauty (1814) by Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

The Famous Love Poems: Story Behind the Lyrics:

Written just several months before he met and married his first wife, Anna Milbanke, and published in Hebrew Melodies in 1815, the poem of praise “She Walks in Beauty” was inspired by the poet’s first sight of his young cousin by marriage, Anne Wilmot, who was wearing a black spangled mourning dress. Lord Byron was struck by his cousin’s dark hair and fair face, the mingling of various lights and shades.

According to his friend, James W. Webster, “When we returned to his rooms in Albany (after the party), he said little, but desired Fletcher to give him a tumbler of brandy, which he drank at once to Mrs. Wilmot’s health, then retired to rest, and was, I heard afterwards, in a sad state all night. The next day he wrote those charming lines upon her—She walks in Beauty like the Night…”

Of course it’s obvious that this poem is somewhat of a love poem, expressing how beautiful this woman is that Lord Byron is looking at. Whether it is a true declaration of love or a statement of admiration (of his cousin’s beauty) is left to the reader.

The real power of these, among the most memorable and most quoted lines in romantic poetry, lies in its powerful description not only of a woman’s physical beauty, but also of her interior strengths. The poet is obviously after something much larger than mere physical description.

About the Poet:

The most notorious Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe, Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was famous in his lifetime for his love affairs with women and Mediterranean boys as for his poetry.

Apart of this poem, amongst Byron’s best-known works are When We Two Parted, and So, we’ll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest European poets and remains widely read and influential, both in the English-speaking world and beyond.

Byron served as a regional leader of Italy’s revolutionary organization, the Carbonari, in its struggle against Austria. He later traveled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died from a fever in Messolonghi in Greece.

Byron: Life and Legend

Selected Poetry of Lord Byron

Audio CD: Poems By Lord Byron

Lord Byron: The Major Works

2. | Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day (around 1599) by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft’ is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s
changing course untrimm’d:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou
wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The Famous Love Poems: Story Behind the Lyrics:

This is the eighteenth of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. Its also probably the most famous love poem in the world, and certainly one of the best-known sonnets contained in the English literary canon. One of the things that makes it so popular are the conspiracy theories if someone can call them that. Allot of people believe that this poem is written to a man – not a woman!?

There are many theories about the identity of the 1609 Quarto’s enigmatic dedicatee, Mr. W.H. Some scholars have pointed out that the order in which the sonnets are placed may have been the decision of publishers and not of Shakespeare. This introduces the possibility that Sonnet 18 was originally intended for a woman.

Actually, the first 126 sonnets are written to a youth, a boy, probably about 19, and perhaps specifically, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. His initials, W.H., appear in Thorpe’s dedication, and the first volume of Shakespeare’s plays, published by two of his fellow actors, Herminge and Condell, after Shakespeare’s death, was dedicated to William Herbert.

Whatever the truth is, Shakespeare used a conventional form of poetry to praise poetry and his beloved. A poem can stir all of the senses, and the subject matter of a poem can range from being funny to being sad. He boasted that both would be preserved nearly eternally. Five hundred years later, no one refutes his boast.

About the Poet:

English poet, dramatist, and actor William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is considered by many to be the greatest playwright of all time, although many of the facts of his life remain mysterious.

Shakespeare’s poetry was published before his plays, with two poems appearing in 1593 and 1594, dedicated to his patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Most of Shakespeare’s sonnets were probably written at this time as well.

His early plays were mainly comedies and histories. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Over the centuries there has been much speculation surrounding various aspects of Shakespeare’s life including his religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sources for collaborations, authorship of and chronology of the plays and sonnets. Many of the dates of play performances, when they were written, adapted or revised and printed are imprecise.

Shakespeare spent the last five years of his life in Stratford, by now a wealthy man. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

William Shakespeare Complete Works

Biography – William Shakespeare (DVD)

BBC Shakespeare Histories (DVD Giftbox)

The Complete Dramatic Works (DVD)

1. | To… (Kern) (1825) by Alexander Pushkin

I still recall the wondrous moment
When you appeared before my eyes,
Just like a fleeting apparition,
Just like pure beauty’s distillation.

When I languished
in the throes of hopeless grief
Amid the troubles of life’s vanity,
Your sweet voice lingered on in me,
Your dear face came to me in dreams.

Years passed. The raging, gusty storms
Dispersed my former reveries,
And I forgot your tender voice,
Your features so divine.

In exile, in confinement’s gloom,
My uneventful days wore on,
Bereft of awe and inspiration
Bereft of tears, of life, of love.

My soul awakened once again:
And once again you came to me,
Just like a fleeting apparition
Just like pure beauty’s distillation.

My heart again resounds in rapture,
Within it once again arise
Feelings of awe and inspiration,
Of life itself, of tears, and love.

The Famous Love Poems: Story Behind the Lyrics:

Ana Petrovna Kern’s immortality was ensured when, on 19 July 1825, Pushkin handed her a copy of his famous lyrics.

20 year old Pushkin first met Anna, a Russian socialite and memoirist, in Olenin’s (president of the art academy) residence. Then they met again 6 years later during her stay with relatives in Trigorskoe, a manor adjacent to Mikhailovskoe, where the great poet was living in exile.

“Lately, our land has been visited by a beauty, who sings the Venetian Night heavenly, in the manner of the gondolier’s cantillation”, Pushkin wrote to his friend Pyotr Pletnev.

The poem starts with the lines “Ya pomnyu chudnoe mgnovenie…”, and Nabokov famously ridiculed attempts at the English translation of these magic lines. Aleksandr Blok marvellously metamorphosed Pushkin’s poem into his own “O podvigakh, o doblestyakh, o slave…”, while Mikhail Glinka put the poem to music and dedicated it to Kern’s daughter Catherine.

Although Pushkin’s biographers tend to idealise their relationship, it is known that he referred to her later as the “whore of Babylon” and wrote to one of his friends that “with God’s help I screwed her the other day”.

In 1826, Kern divorced her aged husband. Ten years later, she married her 16-year-old cousin, Alexander Markov-Vinogradsky. Her last years were spent in such an abject penury that she was constrained to sell out Pushkin’s letters to her.

She died in Moscow and, according to an urban legend, her funeral train passed Pushkin Square just in time when the famous statue of Pushkin was being erected there. This was their last meeting, so to speak.

About the Poet:

Known as Russia’s greatest poet, and the father of the Russian Golden Age of Literature, during a time when most great literature was being written in French and English, Alexander Pushkin (Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin) – (1799-1837) is revolutionized Russian literature with narrative poems, love poems, political poems, short stories, novels, plays, histories, and fairy tales.

Born in Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen. Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals; in the early 1820s he clashed with the government, which sent him into exile in southern Russia. While under the strict surveillance of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will, he wrote his most famous play, the drama Boris Godunov, but could not publish it until years later. His novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, was published serially from 1825 to 1832.

Pushkin and his wife Natalya Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, later became regulars of court society. In 1837, while falling into greater and greater debt amidst rumors that his wife had started conducting a scandalous affair, Pushkin challenged her alleged lover, Georges d’Anthès, to a duel. Pushkin was mortally wounded and died two days later.

It seems as though everyone in Russia has read Pushkin and is ready to quote him; there are Pushkin streets, squares and parks in almost every major city. There are museums and monuments, and even an entire city named after him. Every type of Russian, regardless of age or political affiliation, loves Pushkin.

In America, the African American Museum in Cleveland has a permanent Pushkin exhibition, and magazines from Ebony to Black Scholar often run articles on his life and works.

However, his writing style has distinctive rhythmic patterns that are nearly impossible to translate, so non-Russian speakers have not always been able to appreciate the true power and beauty of his work.

Alexander Pushkin: Complete Prose Fiction

Russian Writers – Alexander Pushkin (DVD)

Collected Narrative and Lyrical Poetry

After Pushkin: Contemporary Poets Interpretations

Putting it all Together

There is a universal belief that famous love poems express the innermost feelings and the state of the poets heart at the moment of creation.

Even if the context was imaginative, the thought and the content of the love poems, to be truthful emotional expressions, must bare a personal touch, and should be a discrete testament of poets bounds to a particular person who was the initial addressee for its creative inspiration.

Sometimes, the insight in the creative process itself may give an additional comfort to the universal readers necessity, to peek beyond the poets imagination.