There are many different types of poetry used in the world but below we intend to provide you a summary of the 7 most popular:
- Free Verse
The name is highly descriptive; this type of poetry gives the author all the freedom they could possibly want. In this form, you can format the poem any way you like (indenting perhaps only the second line in a four line stanza). You are also free to use the meter of your choosing, if you use any meter at all.
The key with free form poetry is to make your structure, or lack thereof, meaningful. Stanzas are like paragraphs, and a change in stanza should indicate a change in topic. Feel free to be creative with your structure, and how the poem appears on the page, using it to accent the meaning of your words.
- Shakespearean Sonnet
There are other types of sonnet, but Shakespeare's is by far the most famous and well used. Sonnets must follow a very rigid format. They are 14 lines in length, use iambic pentameter (10 syllables per line arranged in iambs). They have three four line stanzas and finish with a rhyming couplet. See the scanned example above to see how the rhyme scheme and meter look.
You are not forbidden from making small deviations from the sonnet form, but when you do make a deviation, make it meaningful. Such a change signals to the reader that this point in the poem is important, and that they should take special note of it. Sonnets are generally written in praise of a person or thing.
Example:
Sonnet #57
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
where you may be, or yours affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave, stay and think of naught
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
- William Shakespeare
- Haiku
Haiku is a poetic form and a type of poetry from the Japanese culture. Haiku combines form, content, and language in a meaningful, yet compact form.
Haiku poetry can have as many stanzas as you like. Each stanza is made up of three lines with a certain number of syllables each. The first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 and the last line has 5.
Haikus are generally light-hearted and possibly humorous, with their syllables counts lending a certain absurdity to the reading. They intend to create a mental image in the reader’s mind. Haikus generally describe people, things, or events. Having characters speak in haiku may add a new level of challenge to your regular prose writing; you just have to think up a situation where it works!
Example:
The Rose
Donna Brock
The red blossom bends
and drips its dew to the ground.
Like a tear it falls
- Limerick
A limerick is a five-line poem written with one couplet and one triplet. If a couplet were a two-line rhymed poem, then a triplet would be a three-line rhymed poem.
A limerick always has 5 lines.
The number of syllables in a limerick's lines is 8-8-5-5-8 respectively (one extra non-stressed syllable may be added at the start of each line but the first).
The three 8-syllable lines must rhyme.
The two 5-syllable lines must rhyme, too.
The first line of a limerick should introduce a person and ideally mention a location.
Limericks are meant to be funny. They often contain hyperbole, onomatopoeia, idioms, puns, and other figurative devices. The last line of a good limerick contains the PUNCH LINE or "heart of the joke."
Example:
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were caught, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "Let us flee."
"Let us fly," said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
-Anonymous
- Acrostic
It's easily explained as being a poem where the first letter of each line spells a word that can be read vertically
Example:
Summers' gifts of sensational feelings,
Heaping happiness in poets' path
Awarding praises for poetic data
Doses of episodes, where lived
Original thoughts; orgasmic tempo
Weavers of words; morning's dew
- Cinquain
It's a type of poetry in which the first line has one word, the second has two words describing the first line, the third line shows action with three words, the fourth line has four words that convey feeling, and the fifth line refers to line one.
Example:
July
Hot, muggy
Firecrackers pop loudly
Exciting, thrilling, and inspiring
Patriotic month
- Ballad
A ballad is a story song that often has a refrain or chorus.
Example:
The Ballad of Marian Blacktree
Refrain:
Oh, do you know the mountain road
That leads to yonder peak?
A few will walk that trail alone,
Their dreams they go to seek.
(1)
One such was Marian Blacktree,
A lowly shepherdess,
And courting her was Tom, the swain,
Who loved her nonetheless.
(2)
A thought occurred to Marian
While watching o'er her sheep,
And gazing at the mountain thus
She nodded off to sleep.
(Refrain)
(3)
That night she came to Tom and said
She longed to know the sky.
"I'm weary of this valley, love,
I want to learn to fly!"
(4)
Poor Thomas did not want to leave,
This valley was all he knew.
So when she turned and left him there
Her heart, it broke in two.
(Refrain)
(5)
Her faithful swain did track her,
All night the trail led on,
And finally at the mountain top
He looked, but she was gone.
(6)
As morning broke and lit the sky
An eagle he did see:
It circled 'round him thrice and cried.
He knew now she was free.
(Refrain)
