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May 10, 2020 · For anyone wanting to know more about the different verse forms, we highly recommend Stephen Fry’s accessible and fun introduction, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within. 1. Sonnet. Let’s start with one of the most widely used and enduring verse forms in all of literature. Originating in Italy in the thirteenth century (it was ...
- 15 Different Types of Poem Everyone Should Know
Perhaps the most ubiquitous type of poem, and therefore the...
- 15 Different Types of Poem Everyone Should Know
Perhaps the most ubiquitous type of poem, and therefore the perfect place to begin our odyssey of verse forms and varieties, the lyric is named for the lyre, the harp-like instrument played since classical times. Sappho, the pioneering ancient Greek love poet, wrote short poems expressing her feelings of desire and love and regret and heartache and a myriad other things, and her poems were ...
- 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.
- Acrostic. In an acrostic, the first letter of each line spells out a word or phrase that’s generally related to the topic of the poem. There are several different types of acrostic, including a double acrostic where both the first and last letter of each line spell out a message.
- Ballad. This is one of the oldest types of poetry, with ancient examples that were passed down orally through the centuries. A ballad tells the story of a person or event.
- Blackout Poetry. ADVERTISEMENT. These poems are unique in that they use something that’s already been written, and strike out most of the text to leave only selected words and phrases.
- Blank Verse. Blank verse doesn’t rhyme, but it’s a structured form of poetry in terms of meter. These poems are almost always written in iambic pentameter (da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM).
Apr 13, 2023 · Form: The overall structure of a poem is known as its form. A poem’s form can determine its meter and rhyme scheme. Stanza: A stanza is a section of a poem. Think of it like a verse in a song or a paragraph in an essay. Stanzas compose a poem’s form. In a poem, the stanzas can all fit the same meter, or they can vary.
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Feb 13, 2024 · Free verse poetry. Free Verse: Free verse poems do not follow a specific rhyme scheme or rhythmic pattern. Instead, poets mimic the flow of natural speech. Haiku: Originally a Japanese form of poetry, haikus traditionally contain three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. The subject matter of these short poems classically revolved around nature.
