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, Ive 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 Frosts 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
Homers 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.