Forms of Conventional Poetry

1. Haiku
 17syllables shared between three-
lines
 Syllabic pattern of 5-7-5
 Nature is the traditional subject
 Example:

An old silent pond

A frog jumps into water,
Splash! Silence again
 Japanese haiku translated in English:
 Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)  Kobayashi Isaa (1763 – 1828)
Autumn moonlight – Autumn wind –
a worm digs silently mountain’s shadow
into the chestnut. wavers.

Old pond Don’t weep, insects –

a frog jumps Lovers, stars themselves,
the sound of water must part
 Exercise:
 Recall the last visit you had in your
province or hometown. In a limited 5-7-
5 syllabic pattern, capture in a haiku the
strongest impression you felt or scenery
you saw.
Such tranquility
I felt when I sit under
the tree, the winds blew.
 2. Sonnet
 Fixed verse containing 14 lines
in iambic pentameter
 Shakespearean or Petrarchan
 a. Petrarchan Sonnet
 14 lines of iambic pentameter is divided into two:
 Octave (2 rhyme scheme: ABBA ABBA)
 Sestet ( 3 rhyme patterns: CDECDE and CDCCDC
 The Long Love that in my Thought doth Harbour
BY SIR THOMAS WYATT

The long love that in my thought doth harbour

And in mine hert doth keep his residence,
Into my face presseth with bold pretence
And therein campeth, spreading his banner.
She that me learneth to love and suffer octave
And will that my trust and lustës negligence
Be rayned by reason, shame, and reverence,
With his hardiness taketh displeasure.
 The Long Love that in my Thought doth Harbour
BY SIR THOMAS WYATT

Wherewithall unto the hert's forest he fleeth,

Leaving his enterprise with pain and cry,
And there him hideth and not appeareth.
What may I do when my master feareth sestet
But in the field with him to live and die?
For good is the life ending faithfully.
 b. Shakespearean Sonnet
 Also known as English sonnet
 14 lines divided into three quatrains and final
couplets.
 quatrain (ABAB CDCD EFEF)
 Couplet GG
 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,
quatrain
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
quatrain
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
 Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
quatrain
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,
couplet
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
 Exercise
 Using
either Petrarchan or
Shakespearean form, write a
sonnet for a special someone.
 C. Limerick
 Is a humorous poem consisting of five lines
 the first, second, and fifth lines must have 7 to 10
syllables that rhyme and have the same rhythm.
 The third and fourth lines must have 5 to 7 syllables
that should also rhyme with each other and have the
same rhythm.
 Example:
There was an Old Man with a beard
Who said, “It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”
 Exercise:

Come up with a nursery

rhyme that follows the
limerick form.
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
 D. Villanelle
 Comprised of a fixed verse of 19 lines
 5 tercets and a quatrain, where the last two lines of
which are considered as a couplet itself
 No fixed number of syllables, nor well-organized
meter
 Follows a set of rhyme scheme of the refrains
 Rhyme
Line Refrain A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - Poem by James Joyce
Scheme

1 A 1 Are you not weary of ardent ways,

2 b Lure of the fallen seraphim?
3 A 2 Tell no more of enchanted days.

4 a Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze

5 b And you have had your will of him.
6 A 1 Are you not weary of ardent ways?

7 a Above the flame the smoke of praise

8 b Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
9 A 2 Tell no more of enchanted days.
 Rhyme
Line Refrain A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - Poem by James Joyce
Scheme

10 a Our broken cries and mournful lays

11 b Rise in one eucharistic hymn.

12 A 1 Are you not weary of ardent ways?

13 a While sacrificing hands upraise

14 b The chalice flowing to the brim,

15 A 2 Tell no more of enchanted days.

16 a And still you hold our longing gaze

17 B With languorous look and lavish limb!

18 A 1 Are you not weary of ardent ways?

19 A 2 Tell no more of enchanted days

 Free Verse Poetry
 Free from the limitations of fixed meter, rhythm, and
rhyme patterns
 Makes use of normal pauses and natural rhythmical
phrases
 Gives poet freedom to write in a way and style that
pleases him/her and his/her readers.
 Line
 The unit of language in poetry
 Also called verse
 Does not strictly follow the rules of
grammatical structure to differentiate itself
from a phrase or sentence in fiction
 Come slowly – Eden!
BY EMILY DICKINSON
Come slowly – Eden!
Lips unused to Thee –
Line 1
Bashful – sip thy Jessamines –
As the fainting Bee –
Stanza 1
Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums –
Counts his nectars –
Enters – and is lost in Balms.
 Line Break
 Point where one ends a line and begin with
another
 Important poetic device as they offer dynamism
and ambiguity, provide pauses in reading, and
determine the visual shape of the poem.
 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.
 Enjambment
 A thought line of a poem that does
not end at the line break but moves
over to the next line.
 The Waste Land
BY T. S. ELIOT
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
 Exercise
Create a two-stanza free-verse poem
by employing line breaks to create
enjambment. Remove fixed meter
and rhyme pattern in your work.
 Metaphor
 May be used in all types of literature
but not to the same degree that they are
used in poetry.