Poetic Forms

What is a sestina?

• a short poem, often written by an anonymous author, telling a story and is comprised of short verses intended to be sung or recited.

• form of lyric poetry — expressing emotion — and it's usually addressed to someone or something and praising it.

• a poem with six stanzas of six lines and a final triplet, all stanzas having the same six words at the line-ends in six different sequences that follow a fixed pattern, and with all six words appearing in the closing three-line envoi.

• a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line.

What is a sonnet?

• a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line.

• Genre of poem that usually written to praise and express

  sorrow for someone who is dead.

• a short poem, often written by an anonymous author, telling a story and is comprised of short verses intended to be sung or recited.

• A long narrative poem detailing a hero’s deeds.

What is an elegy?

• form of lyric poetry — expressing emotion — and it's usually addressed to someone or something and praising it.

• a short poem, often written by an anonymous author, telling a story and is comprised of short verses intended to be sung or recited.

• A nondramatic poem which tells a story or presents a narrative,

  whether simple or complex, long or short

• a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.

What is an ode?

• a lyric poem in the form of an address to a particular subject, often elevated in style or manner and written in varied or irregular meter.

• a short poem, often written by an anonymous author, telling a story and is comprised of short verses intended to be sung or recited.

• A long narrative

  poem detailing a

  hero’s deeds.

• a fourteen-line poem, usually written in iambic pentameter, with

  a varied rhyme scheme.

What is an epic?

• a commemorative inscription on a tomb or mortuary monument written in praise, or reflecting the life, of a deceased person.

• A long narrative poem detailing a hero’s deeds.

• A brief subjective poem marked by imagination, melody, and emotion, but strict definition is impossible.

• Genre of poem that usually written to praise and express sorrow for someone who is dead.

What is blank verse?

• a poem that is not separated into stanzas or verse paragraphs

• a kind of poetry that is written in unrhymed lines but with a regular metrical pattern

• poems that use a closed, specific structure or pattern

• a song or poem composed after someone's death; these songs are usually shorter and more concise than elegies.

What is an epitaph?

• a three-line Japanese poem that follows a syllable pattern of 5-7-5

• poems that contain all the elements of a story and are normally longer than average

• a formal lyric poem that is written in celebration or dedication

• a short lyric written in memory of someone who has died. Sometimes, epitaphs serve as elegies.

What is free-verse?

• a type of poem that’s created using someone else’s words, phrases, or structure

• a fourteen-line poem, follow an initial rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA, and use iambic pentameter.

• lines are unrhymed and there are no consistent metrical patterns. But, that doesn't mean it is entirely without structure

• a verse form that is made up of four lines with fifteen different possible rhyme schemes

What is a villanelle?

• a nineteen-line poem that is divided into five tercets or sets of three lines, and one concluding quatrain, or set of four lines

• a fourteen-line poem that usually makes use of the metrical pattern of iambic pentameter

• invented by the famous sixteenth-century poet Edmund Spenser and uses a rhyme scheme of ABAB BCBC CDCD EE.

• follows a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG and uses iambic pentameter

What is a cinquain?

• poems of seven lines that are written using parts of speech

• a poetic form that makes use of a pattern of five lines

• A broad designation for poetry intended for performance. The genre has its roots in oral traditions and performance.

• a verse composed of rhymes, figurative language, and varying syllables. It's commonly written using first-person, with the lyrics directed towards a real or imaginary rival