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A c r o s t i c
Any poem in which the first letter of each line forms a word or words. The words formed are often names—the poet’s or the dedicatee’s. Longer acrostic poems can create entire sentences from the first letter of each line. Acrostic poems are free to rhyme or not rhyme and can be metered or free verse.
B a l l a d
A short narrative poem with stanzas of two or four lines and possibly a refrain that most frequently deals with folklore or popular legends and is suitable for singing. Ballads are constructed of alternating lines of four and three beats (feet). The lines are usually iambic, but need not be. This accordion-like construction creates a lilting, sing-song style. An example of a ballad would be Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (the first three stanzas are excerpted here):
It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. `By thy long beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin ; The guests are met, the feast is set : May'st hear the merry din.'
He holds him with his skinny hand, There was a ship,' quoth he.Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon !' Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
B l a n k V e r s e
Blank verse is poetry that has no set stanzas or line length. It is a common form of poetry seen often in Shakespeare, Milton, Yeats, Auden, Stevens, and Frost. In fact, a great deal of the greatest literature in English has been written in blank verse. Blank verse is unrhymed lines that follow a strict rhythm, usually iambic pentameter. An example of unrhymed iambic pentameter (Blank Verse) is John Milton’s Paradise Lost:
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With the loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us and regain the blissful seat…
C i n q u a i n
Despite the French name, the cinquain is actually an American poem influenced by the Japanese haiku. Cinquains are usually light verse used to express the brief thoughts or moments. This form utilizes few adverbs and adjectives, working best with a profusion of nouns and verbs. Cinquains have a strict syllabic count that must be adhered to. The poem is five lines and 22 syllables long. It need not follow any metric pattern, though an iambic cinquain is not unusual. The first line of the poem has 2 syllables, the second line 4, the third line 6, the fourth has 8, and the final line has 2. For an example of a cinquain, we turn to its inventor, Adelaide Crapsy:
These be Three silent things: The falling snow... the hour Before the dawn... the mouth of one Just dead.
E l e g y
A poem of lament and praise and consolation, usually formal and about the death of a particular person. Elegies can also mourn the passing of events or passions. They can be meditative and distressed, such as “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray (arguably the most famous poem to take this form). Elegies are seldom without form, though the form varies from poem to poem.
E p i c
The epic is a long narrative poem that usually unfolds a history or mythology of a nation or race. The epic details the adventures and deeds of a hero and, in so doing, tells the story of a nation. Epic poetry is the oldest form of poetry dating back to classics like Gilgamesh , The Iliad , and Beowulf. Though too long to be excerpted here, any of these works would serve as fine examples of an epic. Epics often follow a recognizable pattern, but there is no set pattern. The form changes from culture to culture, language to language.
E p i s t l e
Poems written in the form of a letter are called epistles. Epistle can adhere to form or can be free of meter and rhyme. The only requirement is that it is in letter form. One of the better known epistles is Alexander Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.”
L i m e r i c k
A short, humorous form known for off-color statements. The limerick is a five line poem with meter and rhyme. The first, second, and fifth lines are all iambic tetrameter with end rhyme. The third and fourth lines are iambic trimeter and rhyme with each other but not the other three lines. The following is an example of a limerick by Rudyard Kipling:
hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac hovers half open above the child, hovers above the old grandmother and her teacup full of dark brown tears. She shivers and says she thinks the house feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove. I know what I know, says the almanac. With crayons the child draws a rigid house and a winding pathway. Then the child puts in a man with buttons like tears and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother busies herself about the stove, the little moons fall down like tears from between the pages of the almanac into the flower bed the child has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.
S o n n e t
One of the most popular forms, the sonnet has two major styles, English (or Elizabethan or Shakespearean) and Italian (or Petrarchan). Both forms are fourteen lines long and are renowned for focusing on love. Often, the first eight lines of the poem (the first two quatrains in an English sonnet) demonstrate the problem to be solved, and the final six lines (the last quatrain and a couplet in the English sonnet) resolve it. Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. The English sonnet adheres to this rhyme pattern: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, or a variation on it. The Italian sonnet usually follows this pattern: ABBA ABBA CDE CDE. Sometimes the tercets (groups of three lines) vary. These variations can look like: CDC DCD or CDC DDC or CDC EDC. Finally, there is a second form of English sonnet known as the Spenserian sonnet. It rhymes ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. It follows the same basic pattern as the Shakespearean sonnet but varies the rhyme. Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 is one of the most recognized examples of this form:
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. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
V i l l a n e l l e
Borrowed from the French, the villanelle is a poem of heavy repetition made famous by Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight.” In this poem, as in all villanelles, entire lines are repeated. Nineteen lines long, the villanelle not only repeats lines, it rhymes. The pattern is ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA. The first and third lines of the poem repeat alternatively at the ends of every subsequent stanza. Usually completed in iambic tetrameter or pentameter, the poem has a clear cadence. The villanelle looks like this:
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
