A way of publishing your poetry to large number of people, to the audience that cares, this is the fundamental promise of twiHaiku, new online Twitter publishing application that leverage the core virtues of Internet and social networking.
Just listen to a few tweets from the followers who are discovering that poetry is very much alive on the web and now it is living in ways that were never possible or existed before the creation of Twitter and twiHaiku:
“30 seconds in and I already have a huge crush on @twihaiku …. ” @saponista
TwiHaiku official website presents an easy to use online application that aims to collect and publish quality original short poetry, which moderated selection of the best twiHaiku poems is available at TwiHaiku Twitter account page. It is a pure poetry channel, without an usual Twitter noise, for all poetry lovers to follow, read, discuss, rate, search and contribute to the best collection of the short verse poetry online.
@twihaiku page
Favorite new place to rage
Where I play a Sage.
Just in case you did not know, Twitter become one of the, if not the single most important Web 2.0 medium in the world. More people are joining this micro-blogging service everyday, discovering twitter poetry, and many different forms it is taking on.
Status message-inspired nature of Twitter (brief text messages uploaded to a web site that others subscribe to, follow and read) is perfect for scripting concise poetry such as haiku, short or light verses poetry, because you are limited to 140 characters (to fit in a standard SMS message). This means you’re limited to around 5 letters per syllable, which should be plenty to create a masterpiece.
Beautiful and sad
Seemingly without purpose
Little flightless bird.
Poems that can fit inside 140 characters – Twitter Poetry – Very 21st century! We care about poetry precisely because it exists outside this frenetic word-space. In a world echoing with tweets and stats and sound bytes, our need for poetry has never been greater.
TwiHaiku is poetry for today and our fast-paced lifestyles. Starting from the simple Twitter question: “What are you doing?”, 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.
I took to the jail
Flowers grew between the bars
Beauty set me free
Giving a new meaning to the poetry in cyberspace, TwiHaiku website offers friendly collaborative interface that significantly extends the obscure list of Twitter interacting options. In addition to the simple poetry submission, similar to the other social networking services like Digg, StumbleUpon or Facebook, twiHaiku users may easily vote, bookmark, search or discuss their favorite poems, directly influencing and refining the content of the Twitter page.
This way, only the top quality content is presented to the followers without an frequently emphasized drawback of ordinary Twitter accounts that incorporate a lot of not relevant and usually meaningless content (like the owners daily routine preferences)
New poetry form for the 21th century
The destiny of TwiHaiku project is now entirely in hands of the online community and its vast creative potential demonstrated so many times in recent years. If successful, this project may mark a new chapter in the history of modern poetry, and be the roll-model for many similar ventures waiting to reshape the way we are consuming the poetry today.
You may follow twiHaiku and contribute to its daily poetry sessions on its official webpage at www.twiHaiku.com.
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.
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
