Types of Poetry

Acrostic

·         Poetry that certain letters, usually the first in each line form a word or message when read in a sequence.

Ballad

·         A story in a song usually a narrative song or poem. Any form of story may be told as a ballad (not to be confused with a ballade), ranging from accounts of historical events to fairy tales in verse form. It is usually with foreshortened alternating four- and three-stress lines ('ballad meter') and simple repeating rhymes, and often with a refrain.

Cinquain

·         A Cinquain has 5 lines-based on the number of syllables or words:

1) the title
2) a description of the title in 4 syllables or words
3) a description of the action in 6 syllables or words
4) a description of the feeling on 8 syllables or words
5) another word for the title in 2 syllables or words

Diamante

·         A Diamante poem is diamond-shaped to show growth or movement from one extreme to another:

                                   

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adjective

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participle

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Epitaph

·         A commemorative inscription on a tomb or mortuary monument written to praise the deceased.

Free verse (vers libre)

·         A term describing various styles of poetry that are not written using strict meter or rhyme, but that still are recognizable as 'poetry' by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers can perceive to be part of a coherent whole.

Haiku

·         17 syllables:

·         5 syllables 
7 syllables
5 syllables

Tanka

·         A Japanese poem of five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the others seven. In Japanese, tanka is often written in one straight line, but in English and other languages, we usually divide the lines into the five syllabic units: 5-7-5-7-7.

Shape

·         Poetry written in the shape or form of an object. Shape poems do not have to take the form of the object it describes. This form is different than a concrete poem, in that a concrete poem takes the shape of the object it describes.

Sonnet

·         Lyric poems that are 14 lines that usually have one or more conventional rhyme schemes.

Quatrain

·         A stanza or poem consisting of four lines. In the basic form, Lines 2 and 4 must rhyme while having a similar number of syllables

Ode 

·         A lengthy lyric poem typically of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style and formal stanza structure. A classic ode is structured in three parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist.