Poetry Genres - Different Forms of Poems

This thread is conceived as a baseline for a further discussion about various poetry forms, by offering a short description and examples for each. You may get back to it when choosing the appropriate poetry forms for your subsequent reading or authorship.

Acrostic

Acrostic is a short verse composition, so constructed that the initial letters of the lines, taken consecutively, form words.

Quote:The DOLPHIN by Charlotte & Catherine

Distressed dolphin dives dangerously
Over the elegant waves.
Light shimmers over its skin
Pounding up and down.
Hungry the dolphin cries
Its mother sighs.
Now the dolphin's day has ended.

Acrostic may or may not rhyme. Rhyming and meter don’t form part of the form of acrostic but both may be used to facilitate easy reading and complicate the form a little more to add challenge to the writer. Good acrostic poems are those that not only follow the form, but are telling a story within the confines of the form, and are incorporating a little humor at the same time.

Double and triple acrostics occupy an important niche in the history of word puzzles, for it is generally recognized that they were the predecessors to the crossword puzzle.

A double acrostic consists of clues for a sequence of words (the cross-lights) to be written in a list, plus two clues to the words spelled out by the first and last letters of the cross-lights (the uprights).

Quote:NATURE by M C Gupta

Not till now in life of man
Arrived a time when a
Threat is to man's nature that:
Unless the vile AIDS "flu"
Retracts, future all our,
Endangered will be sure.

In a triple acrostic a third upright is formed out of interior letters in the cross-lights. The cross-lights may consist of words of varying lengths, but the uprights are obviously constrained to have exactly as many letters as there are cross-lights.

Quote: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

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.

Find out more about Acrostic Poems here >>
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The Ballad

The oldest, in some ways the easiest, and surely the most enduring of all poetic forms, a typical ballad is a narrative poem, a poem which tells a story, with one or more characters hurriedly unfurling events leading to a dramatic conclusion.

Quote:I saw the new moon late yestreen
Wi' the auld moon in her arm;
And if we gang to sea, master,
I fear we'll come to harm.

A stanza from "Sir Patrick Spens," a medieval ballad.

As this old examples shows, the traditional ballad stanza has four lines, alternating between four iambic beats, and three beats per line. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Traditional ballades emphasize strong rhythms, repetition of key phrases, and rhymes; if you hear a traditional ballad, you will know that you are hearing a poem. Ballads are meant to be song-like and to remind readers of oral poetry--of parents singing to children, for instance, or of ancient poets reciting their verse to a live audience.

Literary ballads, written by poets to be read as literature, have the additional goals of poetry - sound and meaning become as important as rhythm, rhyme and story. Written by a specific author, these ballads are not set to music:

Quote:Dressed All In Pink by Dudley Randall

It was a wet and cloudy day
when the prince took his last ride.
The prince rode with the gonernor,
and his princess rode beside.

"And would you like to ride inside
for shelter from the rain?"
"No I'll ride outside, where I can wave
and speak to my friends again."
...
Pink as a rose the princess rides,
but bullets from a gun
turn that pink to as deep a red
as red, red blood can run,
...

Some famous balladeers are the nineteenth-century poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge which "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", the tale of a cursed sailor aboard a storm-tossed ship, is one of the English language’s most revered ballads. Other balladeers, including Thomas Percy and, later, W. B. Yeats, contributed to the English tradition. In America, the ballad evolved into folk songs such as "Casey Jones," the cowboy favorite "Streets of Laredo," and "John Henry."
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Blank Verse

Blank verse is unrhyming verse in iambic pentameter lines. 'Iambic pentameter' simply means that each normal line has ten syllables, five of them stressed, and that the rhythm is biased towards a pattern in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed one.

Quote:By this still hearth, among these barren crags
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race ,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

from "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Blank verse poetry was developed in Italy and became widely used during the Renaissance because it resembled classical, unrhymed poetry. Marlowe's "mighty line," which demonstrated blank verse's range and flexibility, made blank verse the standard for many English writers, including both Shakespeare and Milton.

Quote:
(Romeo and Juliet, 2.2.1)

Blank Verse remained a very practiced form up until the twentieth century when Modernism rebelled and openly experimented with the tradition. Regardless, blank verse was embraced by Yeats, Pound, Frost, and Stevens who skillfully brought the tradition through this century. While it may not be as common as open form, it retains an important role in the world of poetry.

Blank verse poetry can contain any number of lines. It is the traditional metre for long narrative poems and verse drama. It is also often used for poems of description and reflection and for dramatic monologues: poems in the form of a speech by a single character.
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The Cinquain

The cinquain (from the French, meaning "a grouping of five"), also known as a quintain or quintet, is a poem or stanza composed of five lines and no more than two full sentences with two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, respectively. Examples of cinquains can be found in many European languages, and the origin of the form dates back to medieval French poetry.

Quote:Untitled French Cinquain

C’est elle
qui pleure en rouge
pensées—ses yeux, ils parlent
des plafonds noir, étrange. La pute
s’en fou.
***

She's the one
who cries in red
thoughts--her eyes, they speak
of dark, strange ceilings. The slut
doesn't give a f**k.

Rough translation into English.

Sixteenth and seventeenth-century poets such as Sir Philip Sidney, George Herbert, Edmund Waller, and John Donne frequently employed the form, creating numerous variations.

Quote:The World by George Herbert

Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,
And spinning fancies, she was heard to say
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,
Whereas they were supported by the same;
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.

Cinq-Cinquain - From the French, meaning "five groupings of five", the Cinq-Cinquain consists of five Cinquain. Each has five lines, with two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, respectively, with twenty-two syllables per stanza.

The Handbook of Poetic Forms suggests: Do not add words to fill out this form; write with feeling, but do not allow your writing to become cloyingly sweet; build toward a climax and put a surprise into your last two lines. Rather than parts of speech, be concerned with thoughts and images.
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Clerihew

This form of poetry is named after its inventor Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) whose first collection of verse in this vein was published in 1905 as Biography For Beginners:

Quote:Clerihew by Edmund Clerihew Bentley

Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Clerihews are funny poems you write about specific people (your parents, your boss, your favorite movie star, your best friend, your pet, or anyone else you can think of). Clerihews have just a few simple rules:

• They are four lines long.
• The first and second as weel as the third and fourth lines rhyme with each other
• The first line names a person, and the second line ends with something that rhymes with the name of the person
• A clerihew should be funny
  

You don't have to worry about counting syllables or words, and you don't even have to worry about the rhythm of the poem. You can even write clerihews about characters from books, movies, comics, cartoons, etc.:

Quote:The enemy of Harry Potter
Was a scheming plotter.
I can't tell you what he's called; I'd be ashamed
To name "he who must not be named."

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Couplet

Couplets are any two lines working as a unit, whether they comprise a single stanza or are part of a larger stanza. Most couplets rhyme (aa), but they do not have to. A closed Couplet is where both lines are end-stopped (pause at the end). An open Couplet is where the second line is a run-on line (completes the thought in the following couplet). The following example shows examples of both closed and open couplets:

Quote: Claiborne Walsh was young and full of vim,
Wanting to impress that one special him.

Didn't want to appear too giggly or girlish.
Tried hard not to be too mean nor churlish.

At the park she saw him while batting baseballs,
Listened raptly, gazed adoringly, got phone calls

Let him throw baseballs for her to bat and hit.
He didn't really think she would so well with it.

It's a miracle this fellow's still up breathing and alive.
She conked him in his loins with a solid hit line drive.

Claiborne Schley Walsh, Montrose, AL

Couplets can stand as single thoughts, meaning they can exist on their own, outside of the poem, or they can be enjambed, relying on the previous and succeeding couplets to be complete. Because the couplet can be so small, it is a good idea to pack it full of image and emotion, like a hard punch packed in a tight space, very concentrated.
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Fee Form - Free Verse

Free verse has been around for several centuries, only in the 20th century did it become one of the most popular forms of poetry. Its popularity stems from the belief that free verse is poetry without rules; after all, it doesn't rhyme, and it doesn't have a meter. While certainly free form has very few distinct rules or boundaries, what separates poetry from prose is the arrangement of carefully chosen words into verses. It is similar to blank verse in that it does not rhyme, but unlike blank verse, it is not written in iambic pentameter.

Quote:Running through a field of clover,
Stop to pick a daffodil
I play he loves me, loves me not,
The daffy lies, it says he does not love me!
Well, what use a daffy
When Jimmy gives me roses?

by Flora Launa

It may be more difficult to write free verse than any other form, simply because the poet has more decisions to make, and he must create its own pattern to follow. The writer decides how the poem should look, feel, and sound. Henry David Thoreau, a great philosopher, explained it this way:

Quote:"..perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

It may take you a while to "hear your own drummer," but free verse can be a great way to "get things off your chest" and express what you really feel.
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Haiku

One of the most important form of traditional Japanese poetry, Haiku is a short poem consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines containing five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. It normally includes a seasonal reference and often conveys something deeper behind the superficial words, at the same time it use simple words and describe experiences common to most readers, in a fresh and insightful way.

Quote:The years first day
thoughts and loneliness;
the autumn dusk is here.

by Basho, Matsuo. (1644-1694)

Traditional or Classical Haiku derives from the Haikai (a linked-verse poem) which was created by a group of poets as a long series of small stanzas (or links). The first stanza, which was called the hokku ("starting verse"), set the tone for the subsequent poem by including a reference to the location and season. Due to its distinguishing role and sensibility, by the time, many poets started writing Hokku, many of which were never used as opening links, but was gradually transformed to self stand haiku form. The Modern Haiku dates from Masaoka Shiki's reform, begun in 1892, which established haiku as a new independent poetic form.

Today there are many discussions within Japan on "how to write a haiku" and even more argument outside of Japan on how to write non-Japanese haiku. However, following the moto of the greatest Haiku master Bashō: "Learn the rules; and then forget them.", one should be prepared to practice a profound discipline of Haiku only to be able to relax its full expressionism after becoming a skilled within the form.

Examples of Modern Haiku by Japanese and non-Japanese Authors:

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

by Kijo Murakami (1865-1938)
---
Alone, on the web,
drops of sensitivity
embrace an eyelash

by Alexey V. Andeyev
---
Looking at the clouds
blue in the ice-wind
space flows

by Thomas Grieg

What separates a haiku from any other short, light verse is a specific style emanating from each act in writer's life - living "the Way of Haiku", in an awareness of just this moment, and in the "Spirit of Haiku" (to hold all things with reverence).
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TwiHaiku

With all the craze about Twitter these days it was just a matter of time when someone would recognize the obvious potential of the micro-blogging platform for the literature expression and publishing. TwiHaiku is Twitter application that utilizes a standard Twitter interface allowing the online community to publish, read, discuss and rate short verse poetry online.



The true is that everyone may write twiHaiku.

What makes twiHaiku special is the fact that it resides on the best legacies of Social Media & Networking and WEB 2.0 in bringing the broad audience to the ordinary Internet users who have chance to express poetically and in the public for the first time in their life. There is no speccial rules or restrictions to the form. You are restricted only by the Twitter text-box area (140 characters) and the scope of poetic expression. (and every aesthetic expression that is not prose is the poetry in fact)

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

Another aspect of twiHaiku phenomenon is the topical one. With twiHaiku, you are not only up to date with current developments in literature and poetry, but it also gives you an alternative platform to express your views and attitude related to the world and society in the times of transition and global crises.

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

The form and structure of the poem, ideally should not limit the thought or the idea conveyed by the poet. With TwiHaiku's open and free-form verse, we are much closer to this archetype.

You can start writing and subscribe to TwiHaiku and Twitter Poetry here >>
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Epic

An epic (from Greek: έπος or επικό "word, story, poem"), which makes great demands on a poet's knowledge and skill, has been deemed the most ambitious of poetic forms. It is usually a long and narrative poem which tells a story about heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Epics usually are longer than most poems and may even take up a book. Example: Homer's Iliad.

The first epics are known as primary, or original, epics. Epics that attempt to imitate these like Virgil's The Aeneid and John Milton's Paradise Lost are known as literary, or secondary, epics. One such epic is the Anglo-Saxon story Beowulf.

Another type of epic poetry is epyllion (plural: epyllia) which is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme. The term, which means 'little epic', came in use in the Nineteenth century. It refers primarily to the type of erotic and mythological long elegy of which Ovid remains the master.

Other works classified as epics are the Indian Mahabharata and Ramayana, the French Song of Roland, the Spanish Song of the Cid, the Germanic Niebelungenlied, Dante's Divine Comedy, Tasso's Gerusaleme Liberta, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Spenser's Faerie Queene, finaly Serbian Epic from Kosovo song cycle.

Quote:Thou dear hand, oh thou my fair green apple,
Where didst blossom? Where has fate now plucked thee?
Woe is me! thou blossomed on my bosom,
Thou wast plucked, alas, upon Kosovo!

From Marko Kraljevic - an Serbian Epic song

A mock epic is a form of satire in which trivial characters and events are treated with all the exalted epic conventions and are made to look ridiculous by the incongruity. The plot of Pope's Rape of the Lock, one of the most famous mock epics, is based on a quarrel over the theft of a lady's curl.
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Iambic Pentameter

Shakespeare's plays were written mostly in iambic pentameter, which is the most common type of meter in English poetry. The term originally applied to the quantitative meter of Classical Greek poetry, in which an iamb consisted of a short syllable followed by a long syllable. The term was adopted to describe the equivalent meter in English poetry where it become a basic measure, five iambic feet in each line, that is to say, each of which is a ti-tum. As opposed to a tum-ti.

Quote:Ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum; or
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall

The key to the historic success of this line is its being neither too long nor too short. If it were any longer, the reader would have to emphasise the metre a little more, in order to assert control of the line. But if the iambic pentameter is properly written, you shouldn't have any difficulty understanding how it goes. The poet should have written it so that it comes trippingly off the tongue.

In practice, poets vary their iambic pentameter a great deal, while maintaining the iamb as the most common foot, for example the first line of Richard III begins with an inversion, creating a more interesting overall rhythm and to highlight important thematic elements. In fact, the skillful variation of iambic pentameter, rather than the consistent use of it, may well be what distinguishes the rhythmic artistry of Donne, Shakespeare and Milton.

Quote: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:

Shakespear, Sonnet XVIII

There is some debate over whether works such as Shakespeare's were originally performed with the rhythm prominent, or whether it was embedded in the patterns of normal speech as is common today. In either case, when read aloud, such verse naturally follows a beat.

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Limerick

A standard limerick is a five-line poem with a strict form, with the first, second and fifth having nine syllables and rhyming with one another, and the third and fourth having five or six and rhyming separately, but most modern limericks avoid such repetition. Limericks are witty or humorous, and sometimes obscene with humorous intent.

Quote: The limerick packs laughs anatomical
In space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

The limerick form can be traced back several hundred years. The oldest recorded poem fitting the metrical pattern is from Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).

Quote: Let my viciousness be emptied,
Desire and lust banished,
Charity and patience,
Humility and obedience,
And all the virtues increased.

The limerick, named for a town in Ireland of that name, was popularized by Edward Lear in his Book of Nonsense published in 1846.

Anti-limerick is a sub-genre of poems that take the twist and apply it to the limerick itself. These poems subverts the structure of the true limerick by changing the number of syllables in the lines, or thet follow the meter of a limerick but deliberately breaks the rhyme scheme, like the in the following example:

Quote: There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When they asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
But I thought all the while 't was a Hornet."

Although limericks have been written in a great number of different languages, many of these suffer from the fact that the meter of the limerick does not adapt well to such languages as, for example, French or Latin. Good limericks can be written in languages that have a similar natural rhythm as English.

Find out more about Limerick Poems here >>
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Sonet

From the Italian sonetto, which means "a little sound or song," the sonnet is a popular classical form that is traditionally a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, which employ one of several rhyme schemes and adhere to a tightly structured thematic organization. Two sonnet forms provide the models from which all other sonnets are formed: the Petrachan and the Shakespearean.

Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet is named after one of its greatest practitioners, the Italian poet Petrarca. Since the Petrarchan presents an argument, observation, question, or some other answerable charge in the octave, a turn, or volta, occurs between the eighth and ninth lines. This turn marks a shift in the direction of the foregoing argument or narrative, turning the sestet into the vehicle for the counterargument, clarification, or whatever answer the octave demands.

Quote:It was the day the sun's ray had turned pale
with pity for the suffering of his Maker
when I was caught, and I put up no fight,
my lady, for your lovely eyes had bound me.

from Petrarch's Sonnets

Shakespearean or English Sonnet follows a different set of rules. Here, three quatrains and a couplet follow this rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The couplet plays a pivotal role, usually arriving in the form of a conclusion, amplification, or even refutation of the previous three stanzas, often creating an epiphanic quality to the end.

Quote:My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

From Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130

The sonnet has continued to engage the modern poet, many of whom also took up the sonnet sequence, notably Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Lowell, and John Berryman. Stretched and teased formally and thematically, Modern Sonnet can often only be identified by the ghost imprint that haunts it, recognizable by the presence of 14 lines or even by name only. Recent practitioners of this so-called “American” Sonnet include Gerald Stern, Wanda Coleman, Ted Berrigan, and Karen Volkman.
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Conclusion

These are by no means, all types of poetry forms used. But this is by all means the comprehensive list of the main types. Most poets use these forms and structures while writing their poems. However, these styles of writing help make the poem more musical in its flow.

Finally, this is just a brief overview which tends to lure a further discussion, so shell it be.. the thread is open.

Butterfly.

Thank You so much.

I only wish I had known you back in 1995, when I had to do this for a Literary Arts Workshop I was facilitating. (Is my laziness showing?) You have put together a most excellent resource about poetic forms. And the link to this page is THE ONE I will be sharing with my neighbors this coming Wednesday at a haiku workshop I am doing at the Community Center. Also, I have it tripple bookmarked. Sincerely and in Poetic Love, cindyadriennequashie (BornName) @SomaMoja @BrokePimpStyles

Dear Cindyadriennequashie,

I am deeply honored by your compliments. This forum is about literature and literacy. As long as people may find some useful information that they can use for their own explorations, its purpose's going to be justifiable.

Butterfly.

Hi butterfly,

Well, You are good writer and genius guy because these poems are really awesome and touching the inner soul and heart.I like all the poems and thanks for showing us the true meaning of life. You have created a good awareness among the other and also providing social moral support to different people.I am waiting for another golden poetry from your side.

Thanks