Download Types of Poetry

The Form of Poetry
Yes, there is method to the
madness…
Components of Form




Spacing
Shape
Enjambment/End-stopped
Rhyme Scheme
Spacing
 Space between words and lines
in a poem.
 Changes the pace for the
reader.
 Used to organize concepts and
ideas.
Shape
 The physical shape that the
poem is written in.
 Also called visual rhythm.
 Can help convey meaning.
 Ex: “The Negro Speaks of
Rivers” by Langston Hughes
written to look like a river.
Enjambment vs. Endstopped
 Enjambment: The continuation of a
sentence or clause over a line break.
 Ex : “Passing, before they strip the old tree
bare/ One plum was saved for me, one seed
becomes/ An everlasting song, a singing
tree.”
 End-stopped: The line of poetry ends in a
grammatical unit (. , ? ! Etc)
 Ex: “To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving,
soon gone,/ Leaving, to catch thy plaintive
soul soon gone.”
Rhyme Scheme
 The pattern of rhymes between
lines of a poem.
 Alternate Rhyme: ABAB CDCD
EFEF
 Limerick: AABBA
 Couplet: AA BB CC DD
 Triplet: AAA BBB CCC DDD
 Sonnet: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Types of Poetry
Just to make the definition
a little more complicated.
Free Verse
 In free verse there are no rules.
 There can be some rhyme and
meter, but there is no regular
pattern.
“Free Verse” by Robert Graves
I now delight
In spite
Of the might
And the right
Of classic tradition,
In writing
And reciting
Straight ahead,
Without let or omission,
Just any little rhyme
In any little time
That runs in my head;
Because, I’ve said,
My rhymes no longer shall stand arrayed
Like Prussian soldiers on parade
That march,
Stiff as starch,
Foot to foot,
Boot to boot,
Blade to blade,
Button to button,
Cheeks and chops and chins like mutton.
No! No!
My rhymes must go
Turn ’ee, twist ’ee,
Twinkling, frosty,
Will-o’-the-wisp-like, misty;
Rhymes I will make
Like Keats and Blake
And Christina Rossetti,
With run and ripple and shake.
How pretty
To take
A merry little rhyme
In a jolly little time
And poke it,
And choke it,
Change it, arrange it,
Straight-lace it, deface it,
Pleat it with pleats,
Sheet it with sheets
Of empty conceits,
And chop and chew,
And hack and hew,
And weld it into a uniform stanza,
And evolve a neat,
Complacent, complete,
Academic extravaganza!
Blank Verse
 Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter
 Easy to recognize:
 Count each line to ensure most
have10 syllables.
 Then make sure there is NO fixed
rhyme scheme.
Blank Verse Example
Excerpt from Robert Frost’s “The Mountain”
The mountain held the town as in a shadow
I saw so much before I slept there once:
I noticed that I missed stars in the west,
Where its black body cut into the sky.
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall
Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.
And yet between the town and it I found,
When I walked forth at dawn to see new things,
Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields.
The river at the time was fallen away,
And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones;
But the signs showed what it had done in spring;
Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass
Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark.
…
The Ballad
 Narrative poem - tells a story.
 Often about universals such as
love, honour, courage…
 Connection to songs
 Very strong rhythm
 Plain rhymes
Ballad Example
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
…
"The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
The sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
…
The Epic
 LONG
 Often about a heroic character
 Elevated style to represent
religious or cultural ideals
Epic Example
Homer’s Illiad
…
‘Honor the gods, Achilles; pity him.
Think of your father; I'm more pitiful;
I've suffered what no other mortal has,
I've kissed the hand of one who killed my children.’
He spoke, and stirred Achilles' grief to tears;
He gently pushed the old man's hand away.
They both remembered; Priam wept for Hector,
Sitting crouched before Achilles' feet.
Achilles mourned his father, then again
Patroculs, and their mourning stirred the house.
…
The Lyric
 Short poem.
 Expresses the emotions or
thoughts of the writer directly.
 Examples:
 Sonnets
 Odes
 Elegies
Lyric Example
Dying
(aka I heard a fly buzz when I died )
By Emily Dickinson
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
Sonnet
 Fourteen lines long
 Iambic pentameter
 Shakespearean Sonnet:
 Three quatrains (4-line stanzas)
and a couplet (two lines)
 STRICT end-rhyme scheme
 Abab cdcd efef gg
Sonnet Example
Sonnet 18
By William Shakespeare
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 owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Ode
 Expresses lofty emotion
 Often celebrate an event
 Often addressed to nature,
person, place, or thing.
Ode Example
Ode To A Nightingale
By John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
…
Elegy
 A mournful poem
 A lament for the dead
Elegy Example
Captain! My Captain!
By Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
…