Limerick

Limerick: 5 lines; AABBA rhyme scheme; usually humorous and often bawdy or indecent.

Elegy

Elegy: A poem mourning loss; reflects on death or sorrow; uses artistic language to articulate sentiment.

Acrostic

Acrostic: A poem where the initial letters (or another fixed position) spell a word read vertically; text reads horizontally; can use middle or end letters for hidden words.

Word-order features in acrostics

Some acrostics form a word from middle letters or from end letters; these are variations on how the hidden word is derived.

Shape and form examples

• Easter Wings: shaped poem where lines shorten to a midpoint (forming wings) and then lengthen; emphasizes visual form.
• Rondel: short poem with refrains; a line or phrase repeats, creating a refrain effect (example shown as "Rondel of Merciless Beauty").

Haiku

Haiku: Traditional Japanese form; 3 lines; syllable pattern 5-7-5; focuses on nature, seasonality, or fleeting images to evoke reflection.

Sonnet

Sonnet: 14 lines; fixed structure, rhyme, and meter; often in iambic pentameter; from Italian 'sonetto' meaning little song.

Villanelle

Villanelle: French-origin form with 3-line stanzas followed by a final 4-line (quatrain) ending; the first and third lines of the first stanza alternate as refrains in subsequent stanzas.

Easter Wings (structure note)

The first line has a specific length; lines shorten toward the midpoint to form wings, then lengthen again in the second half.

Visually oriented forms

Beyond traditional forms, writers may create visual poems where layout forms an image on the page; free verse is also an option.

Choosing a form

Matsuo Basho chose Haiku; Shakespeare chose the Sonnet; many forms exist (limerick, elegy, acrostic, villanelle, free verse, visual poetry).

Quick form takeaways

• Haiku: 5-7-5, nature-focused, concise.
• Sonnet: 14 lines