types of poetry

Lyric poem

A brief poem characterized by imagination, emotion, grace, and a single focused impression; does not have a story but rather expresses feelings or thoughts. Includes hymns, sonnets, ballads, odes, elegies, and rondels.

Aubade

A poem about dawn; a morning love song; or a poem about the parting of lovers at dawn

Ballad

A narrative poem/song that recounts an exciting tale

Blason

Ordered poem of praise or blame, proceeding detail by detail

Boasting Poem

A poem in which the characters boast of their exploits; frequently found in oral literatures and in works such as ballads and epics.

Canticle

a hymn or chant, typically with a biblical text, and a poem or song with clear parallels to religious poetry

Carol

A joyful song, especially a religious one related to Christmas

Chain Verse

Poetry in which stanzas are connected together via rhyme scheme, word choice, or another type of repetition

Chant Royal

One of the most complex French verse forms, calling for a dignified, heroic subject, and consisting of sixty lines arranged in five stanzas of eleven lines each and an envoy of five lines.

Complaint

A lyric poem that expresses disappointment and despair over some perceived injustice, especially over a rejected romantic advance

Confessional Poetry

Poetry with a very personal, often painful expression; it's subject matter is very intimate and private, and therefore there is no persona

Dramatic Monologue

a poem in the form of a speech in a dramatic situation, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events; a soul in action

Echo Verse

Poetry with lines that end in repeats

Elegy

a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet's meditations upon death or another solemn theme

Englyn

venerable Welsh verse, usually a quatrain with complex rules governing alliteration and rhyme

Epic

lengthy, lofty narrative poem of high-profiled people and adventure; It has a central hero of stature, expansive setting, courageous deeds, usually involves the supernatural, elevated style, third person narrator, usually begins in media res, lots of epithets. Ex: Iliad, Odyssey

Epithalamion

a poem written in celebration of marriage

Haiku

A japanese form of poetry, consisting of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Concise and detailed picture that carries an insight or emotional appeal, focuses especially on nature

Senryu

A short Japanese style poem, similar to haiku in structure, but it's lighter; treats human beings rather than nature: Often in a humorous or satiric way.

Lament

a poem expressing intense grief, more emotional than a complaint.

Monody

lament that is expressed by a single mourner

Light Verse

A variety of poetry meant to entertain or amuse, but sometimes with a satirical thrust; can be a parody, limerick, cherihew, etc.

Limerick

Light verse in the following pattern: five anapestic lines, of which 1, 2, and 5 are in trimeter and rhyme with each other; and the other two lines are in dimeter and rhyme with each other

Hymn

a song of worship or praise, especially a religious one

Rondeau

French Medieval and Renaissance fixed poetic form. Usually has 15 lines (quintent, quatrain, sestet), only has 2 rhymes, opening words used twice as an unrhyming refrain at the end of the second and third stanzas

Rondel

A french lyric poem, a variation of the rondeau, consisting of two quatrains followed by either a quintet or a sestet (13 or 14 lines total respectively).

Ode

Sustained, respectful lyric poem on a single subject (usually a person or an event); praising, imaginative, exalted, and admiring

Horatian Ode

An ode in which each written stanza has the same length, rhyme scheme, and meter. It is named after the Roman poet Horace, famous for this particular form.

Pindaric Ode

A form of ode with strophe, antistrophe, and epode; named after the Greek poet Pindar.

Irregular Ode

A rhymed ode with an irregular stanzaic structure and form

Meditative Poetry

Certain kinds of metaphysical poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries that combine religious meditation with Renaissance poetic techniques; usually deal with self-knowledge or union with the transcendent. Writers include Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughn.

Metaphysical Poetry

17th century verse by poets reacting against the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry, preferring instead psychological treatments of themes such as love and religion. They did not shy away from the shocking, and experimented with applying their techniques to the extreme. John Donne is regarded as the leader, but other poets are Crashaw, Cowley, Herbert, Vaughn, and Carew. They had a largely negative reputation in the 18th and 19th centuries, thought their reputation improved in the 20th. Characteristics include: Logical exploration and expression of life, form is often an argument; Intellectual, psychological, and bold; themes of death, love, and religion; language is simple and closer to common speech; imagery is drawn from the ordinary and remote.

Pastoral Poetry

poetry about an idealized rustic/rural life, usually featuring shepherds. In Greek tradition, there are three kinds: dialogue or singing match (Eclogue); monologue of a lovesick person; and elegy or lament to mourn the passing of a friend. Today, the term is broadly applied to include poetry in any rustic setting. Examples of this are Hesiod's Works and Days and Virgil's Eclogues.

Bucolic

Pastoral verse that is formal and fanciful; Theocritus and Virgil are most associated with this style; sometimes used to refer to any pastoral poetry

Eclogue

Comes from the Greek word for selection. A formal pastoral poem, including singing matches, rustic dialogue, lament for the dead shepherd, song of courtship, and eulogy.

Sestina

A complex and difficult French verse form, it has six 6-lined stanzas and a 3-lined envoy, all usually unrhymed. The structure has a specific pattern of end-words that are repeated and rearranged.

Sonnet

A verse form consisting of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme; originated in Italy

Pantoum

A poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas (abab) in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.

Clerihew

A whimsical, four-line biographical poem. Made of two couplets (aabb); the first line is the name of the subject. The subject is usually a famous person who is put into a humorous or absurd light.

Prose poem

A poem printed as prose, with both margins justified. Edgar Allen Poe used "prose-poem" as early as 1842; an oxymoron. Roll of Honour and Ashbery's Three Poems are examples of prose poems.

Pure poetry

poetry supposedly free from conceptualized statement or moral preachment; or those portions of a poem remaining after such materials as can be paraphrased adequately in prose are removed

Carmen figuratum/Altar poem/Concrete Verse

Poem that is arranged (by line placement or length) so that the poem itself takes on the shape of the subject.

Mock epic

A parody of traditional epic form, with incantations, speeches, and all. It usually treats a frivolous topic with extreme seriousness, using conventions such as invocations to the Muse, action-packed battle scenes, and accounts of heroic exploits. Example: Battle of the Frogs and Mice

Travesty

Writing that by its incongruity of treatment ridicules a subject that is noble or dignified. Treats a serious subject with frivolity, the opposite of a mock epic

Canzone

A short poem consisting of equal stanzas and an envoy shorter than the stanza. The meter and amount of stanzas vary. Stanza lengths vary from 7 to 20 and the envoy from 3 to 10. Subject is usually about love, nature, and emotions, especially sadness.

Almanac Poem

a poem suitable for inclusion in an old-fashioned almanac, with advice for farmers and astrological information

Anacreontic poetry

Verse in the mood and manner of the lyrics of the Greek poet Anacreon; poems characterized by an erotic, amatory, or Bacchanalian spirit. Star-spangled banner

Art ballad

a term used to distinguish the literary ballad of known authorship from the early ballads of unknown authorship

Alba

A medieval Provencal lament over the parting of lovers at the break of day- coming from the Provencal word for dawn

Ballade

A popular artificial French verse form; typically has three equal stanzas and an envoy (most often has 8 lined stanzas and a 4 lined envoy; ababbcbc bcbc); refrain recurring at the end of each stanza and the envoy; uses only three or four rhymes in the entire poem, occurring in the same order in each stanza and with no rhyme words repeated except in the refrain

Beast Epic

A medieval literary form consisting of a series of linked stories grouped around animal characters and often presenting satirical comment on the church or court by means of human qualities attributed to beast characters; typically has one episode treated as the nucleus for the story.

Blues

An African-American genre of folk music developed in the southern United States; characteristically short (three-line stanza), melancholy, marked by frequent repetition, and sung slowly in a minor mode. The classic three line stanza is similar to the heroic couplet, with the first line repeated and, frequently, with a conspicuous caesura after the second foot of each line

Breton Romance

A medieval French metrical romance, emphasizing love as the central force in the plot; drew on traditions of courtly love and frequently dealt with legends such as Tristan and Iseult and the Arthurian legends.

Lay/Lai

A song or short narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that deals with adventure or romance; the earliest French lays were based on earlier Breton songs based on Celtic themes; also applied to English poems in the 14th century written in imitation of Breton lays.

Breton Lay

The term refers both to the relatively brief form of the medieval French romances, professed to have been sung by Breton minstrels on Celtic themes, and to the English medieval poems written in imitation of such French works.

Calypso

A type of music that originated in the West Indies, namely Trinidad; it is a ballad-like improvisation in African rhythms; frequently deals satirically with current topics

Canso

Love song of troubadours (aab)

Canzonet

A little song; specifically a solo with more than one movement

Round/Catch

A song for at least three voices, in which each singer begins a line or a phrase behind the preceding one but repeats what that preceding one is singing; popular in 17th and 18th centuries; also applied to the intermingling of strong and weak voices in songs wherein the strong voices furnish a bawdy twist

Cavalier lyric

A poem characteristic of the Cavalier Lyricists; lighthearted in tone; graceful, melodious, and polished in manner; artfully showing Latin classical influences; sometimes licentious and cynical or epigrammatic and witty; themes of love, war, chivalry, and loyalty

Cento

A literary patchwork made up of scraps from one or more authors

Chanson

A song; originally composed of two-lined stanzas of equal length, each stanza ending in a refrain, now used to include almost any simple poem meant to be sung

Chanson d'aventure

A poem recounting a romantic adventure, often involving a journey on horseback or a sea voyage

Chanson de geste

A song of great deeds. A term applied to the early French Epic; written in ten-syllable lines marked by assonance and grouped in strophes of varying length; deals with war

Chant

Loosely used to mean a song, but more particularly it signifies the intoning of words to a monotonous musical measure of a few notes.

Shanty/Chantey

A sailor's work song marked by strong rhythm

Choliambus/Scazon

A kind of verse with the trochee or a dactyl replacing an iamb or anapest in a primarily iambic line; in the commonest form, the fifth foot of an iambic pentameter is a trochee; also known as limping or halting iambs

Conversation Poem

A form especially associate with Coleridge. Written in blank verse; they describe a situation in which the poet, in his own voice, addresses an actual person; typically contain only side of the conversation. They contain a philosophical speculation and end with the poet "blessing" the auditor.

Coronach

a lamentation for the dead; a dirge; "wailing together"; a Gaelic word reflecting a custom in Ireland and Scotland

Country house poem

A type of poem, flourishing in the 17th century, that used an actual aristocratic country house as the center of a meditation on life and society; compliments a wealthy patron or friend through a description of his country residence

Country song

A poem related to country life, customarily having to do with a young love, such as "It Was a Lover and His Lass" from Shakespeare's As You Like It

Cubist poetry

Poetry that attempts to do in verse what certain painters do on canvas; that is, take the elements of an experience, fragment them, and arrange them in a meaningful new synthesis.

Triolet

a poem or stanza of eight lines in which the first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh, and the second line repeated as the eighth

Debat

A type of composition usually in verse in which two contestants, frequently allegorical, debate a topic (especially theological or moral) and refer it to a judge; very popular in the middle ages

Definition poem

An Elizabethan mode defined by "a rapid sequence of analogies."

Didactic poetry

Poetry that is primarily intended to teach a lesson

Dirge

A wailing song sung at a funeral or in commemoration of death; a short lyric of lamentation.

Dithyramb

Literary expression characterized by wild, excited, passionate language; historically associated with the hymns in the worship of Dionysus; applied to any wild chant or song

Dolce Stil Nuovo

The sweet new style of thirteenth century lyric poets; emphasized lucidity and complex musicality; written in the vernacular as opposed to Latin; the precursor of modern rhymed verse in Indo-European languages

Double dactyls

A form of light verse consisting of two stanzas, each having four lines of two dactyls; the first line must be a jingle, the second line must be a name, the last lines of each stanza must rhyme, and the second stanza must have one line that is a single word

Dramatic poetry

A type of poetry that utilizes the techniques of drama; the speaker is clearly someone other than the poet

Drinking song

A song sung while drinking. Example: The Star-Spangled Banner

Dub

A type of poetry originating in Jamaica around 1975 with words improvised to a background of recorded music

Encomium

A composition in praise of a living person, object, or event before a special audience; often in the form of an ode

Epideictic poetry

Poetry written for special occasions, primarily for the pleasure and edification of its audience; types of this include epithalamium and encomium

Epyllion

A narrative poem usually presenting an episode from the heroic past and resembling an epic but much briefer and more limited. Example: Tennyson's Idylls of the King

Fleshy School of Poetry

An 1871 essay by Robert W Buchanan accusing Swinburne, Morris, and Rossetti of exalting "fleshiness" and of being in league to praise each other's work and calling them the "mutual admiration school". Rossetti replied with the "The Stealthy School of Criticism" in Athenaeum in December

Folk epic

An epic of unknown authorship, assumed to be the product of communal composition. Examples: Mahabharata, Nibelungenlied

Folk song

Songs of unknown authorship, passed down through oral tradition rather than written down.

Fixed forms

Poems with strict, definite patterns of rhyme and stanzas; many such forms originated in France

French Forms

A name for certain prescribed patterns that originated in France largely during the time of troubadours. Examples: Ballade, Chant Royal, Rondeau, Rondel, Sestina, Triolet, and Villanelle

Georgic

A poem about farming and the practical aspects of rustic life; named after certain poems by Virgil

Ghazal

A flexible lyric form, usually in a small number of couplets with or without rhyme called bayt or sher (most have 7 to 12 bayts); first employed in various Middle Eastern literatures, and later becoming popular among German Romantics.

Glee

A poem written as though to be sung by a group. A musical composition for unaccompanied solo male voices, usually a setting of a light or patriotic poem; also choral settings for mixed voices accompanied or unaccompanied

Gnomic poetry

Aphoristic, moralistic, sententious poetry that expresses a general truth; originated in Ancient Greece, but applied to poetry that dealt in a sententious way with ethical questions. Examples: Many poems in the Poetic Edda

Goliardic Verse

Lilting Latin verse, usually satiric, composed by university students and wandering scholars; celebrating wine, women, and song, marked by licentiousness and irreverent attacks on church and clergy. Example: Carmina Burana

Kyrielle

A rare French form, usually composed of short rhymed couplets with a word or larger verbal group repeated as a refrain

Hudibrastic verse

Comic verse written in octosyllabic couplets with burlesque, satire, mock epic, humor, many forced double and even triple rhymes; Samuel Butler created this kind of verse

Link Sonnet

An English sonnet in which the three quatrains are linked by repeating the second rhyme of one quatrain as the first rhyme of the succeeding quatrain; Spenserian

Litany

A ritualistic form of supplication commonly used in the Catholic church; a series of petitions chanted by a choir in procession; sometimes adopted for poetic expression