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A poetic form is the structure of the poem. This includes how long it is, how many lines or words it uses, and the writer’s use of meter and rhyme. There are many different types of form used in poetry, defined below.
- Pantoum
Related Literary Terms. Cinquain: a poetic form that makes...
- Fourteener
Related Literary Terms Burns Stanza: named for Scottish poet...
- Cinquain
Types of Cinquain Poems The American Cinquain . The most...
- Renga
Glossary Home Poetic Forms . Cite This Page Renga. ring-guh....
- Epistle
They often deal with important subject matter but all...
- Octastich
Glossary Home Poetic Forms . Cite This Page Octastich. An...
- Monostitch
Quatrain: a verse form that is made up of four lines with...
- Heptastich
Heptastich Definition. A heptastich is a seven-line stanza....
- Pantoum
- Sonnet
- Ode
- Ballad
- Elegy
- Epic
- Alexandrine
- Blank Verse
- Villanelle
- Free Verse
- Acrostic
The invention of the sonnet is first accredited to the thirteenth-century Sicilian poet Giacomo da Lentini, who crafted the form as an ideal way of expressing ‘courtly love’. This poetry form was typically meant to express a ‘forbidden love’ in the court (think ‘noble lady falls in love with the squire’) and it was a genre in itself at the time. Mo...
Ever get so excited about that new book you’ve been waiting to get your hands on, or that new game with amazing graphics, that you just want to tell everyone about it? Well, poets have been right there with you for centuries, they even made a poetic form specifically to praise things they think are really amazing. (Though historically speaking, the...
While most modern readers may be more familiar with 80s power ballads than the works of middle-English poets — poetry, culture, and music as we know it today will owe a lot to this form. Ballads were invented to narrate a story in a memorable way. (Ever heard of the lovable vigilante Robin Hood? You might not have if his legend wasn’t passed down i...
An elegy is a mournful poetic form, the origins of which can be traced back to a combination of Ancient Greek poetics and Old English scriptures from the 11th Century, written to lament a death. Given the form’s long and rich history, you could point to a plethora of the most well-known poets — such as John Milton, or Walt Whitman — and probably fi...
The epic poetry form is, as the name might suggest, one of the longest (and oldest) forms of poetry — often book-length. For context, the oldest recorded piece of literature is The Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates back to the Bronze Age between 2500 and 1300 BCE. Though commonly associated with Ancient Greek poets such as Virgil and Homer, almost eve...
The modern English alexandrine is derived from the traditional French alexandrine: one line of twelve syllables, which may be repeated to form a whole poem. What's more, it's not technically a poetic formbut a metrical structure — referring to the rhythm and length of a single line. Though the French alexandrine and the English alexandrine are, by ...
Popular with both old and contemporary writers, blank verse is unrhymed poetry — written most commonly in iambic pentameter. You’ll likely have encountered this form previously; it is commonly found in Shakespeare's plays and poems, chosen perhaps for its similarity to natural English speech. (And, not to mention, it would sound pretty strange if c...
The villanelle is a nineteen-line poetic form strictly consisting of five three-line stanzas, ending in a quatrain. Sadly, this form has nothing to do with a certain loveable villain from BBC’s Killing Eve. In fact, its name can be traced all the way back to the medieval Latin ‘villanus’, meaning ‘farmhand’, reflecting the villanelle’s origin as pa...
Free verse is the favored poetry form for many contemporary poets, in large part because (as the name implies) they can make their own rules — and break them if they wish. Poets naturally choose to make their own rules most often because, in this form, understanding the effect of punctuation and stanza breaks on how a poem is read is essential. Whe...
Acrostic poetry spells out a secret meaning, often using the first letter of each new line, stanza, or any other recurring feature. The hidden message could be a word, phrase, or, more commonly, a name — sounds exciting, right? This form was popularised from the high middle ages onwards, with many poets at the time beginning their longer works with...
- Acrostic. This poetic form spells out a word in a vertical line, most commonly using the initial letter from each line. This popular primary-school exercise dates back hundreds of years, with even the Ancient Greeks and Romans trying their hands at acrostic poetry.
- Ballad. The ballad tells a story, typically in a series of quatrains with an ABAB or ABCB rhyming scheme. Expect thrills and spills, with a plotline, characters and a ‘proper’ ending.
- Blank verse. Blank verse is best known as Shakespeare’s format of choice. It’s made up from unrhymed iambic pentameter. This is a 10-syllable line with every other syllable stressed (say the opening line from Sonnet 18 in your head to get the idea of the rhythm: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”).
- Canzone. Canzone means “song” in Italian. This poetic form dates back to medieval Italy, where it was used by writers including Petrarch and Dante before evolving into the sonnet.
Aug 4, 2014 · Welsh quatrain with end and internal rhymes. Ballade. 28-line French poetic form. Barzeletta (or Frottola-barzelletta). Italian poetic form. Blackout Poems. Making poems from articles. The Blitz. 50-liner invented by Robert Keim. Bob and Wheel. Quintain form that's often part of a longer poem.
- Ballad: A ballad is a narrative poem traditionally set to music and passed down orally. It is comprised of multiple 4-line stanzas (quatrains) that follow either an ABCB or ABAB rhyme scheme.
- Blank Verse: Blank verse consists of any number of unrhyming lines that contain five beats of stressed and unstressed syllables (iambic pentameter). Classical playwrights often used blank verse within their dramatic works.
- Elegy: In an elegy, the poet or speaker expresses grief due to a loss of some kind. Elegies consist of multiple quatrains written in iambic pentameter with an ABAB rhyme scheme.
- Epic: An epic poem is a narrative typically the length of a novel. These poems focus on characters with extraordinary abilities who commit themselves to a journey.
Sonnet. A lyric poem is a kind or type of poem, but it requires no specific form.One of the most popular forms that a lyric can take, however, is the sonnet.Sonnets are almost always fourteen lines (though Gerard Manley Hopkins experimented with a shorter form, and George Meredith with a longer), and usually (though not always) focus on a single speaker describing a scene or expressing their ...
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14. Golden shovel. A golden shovel poem is a more recent poetry form that was developed by poet Terrance Hayes and inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks. Though it’s much newer than many of the types of poetry on this list, it has been enthusiastically embraced in contemporary poetry.
