Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Types of Poetry-Updated
Types of Poetry-Updated
Epic Dirge
Ballad Idyll
Elegy Sonnet
Haiku Limerick
Ode Blank Verse
Free Verse
Epic
An epic is a long and narrative poem that
normally tells a story about a hero or an
adventure. Epics can be oral stories or can
be poems in written form. The Illiad and
the Odyssey are examples of famous epic
poems, as is The Song of Hiawatha by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Ballad
Ballad poems also tell a story, like epic
poems do. However, ballad poetry is often
based on a legend or a folk tale. Ballad
poems may take the form of songs and
may contain a moral or a lesson.
Sonnet
Sonnets: a 14-line poem with a very
specific rhyme and rhythm format. Sonnets
are written in iambic pentameter.
Shakespearian Sonnet
Shakespearian sonnets, the most famous of
the sonnets, have 10 syllables to each of
the 14 lines, with a rhyme format of abab,
cdcd, efef, gg.
The English sonnet has three quatrains
and a final couplet.
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.
Cometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet
Italian sonnet: An octave (eight lines) and
a sestet (six lines); typically rhymed
abbaabba cdecde, it has many variations
that still reflect the basic division into two
parts separated by a rhetorical turn of
argument.
My college life has left me without sleep.
I study every night locked in my room.
The walls at times feel almost like a tomb;
The loneliness doth cause my soul to weep.
Great tears of sadness flow from eyes that keep
Returning to the text where answers loom,
Enshrouded in a chapter like a womb,
My eyes throughout the words do futilely creep.
I must a Big Mac eat or I will die
Of hunger gnawing at my fragile mind
That cannot read another word of this.
I also want a piece of apple pie
That Ronald has so patiently refined.
I must these eat or I will be a mess.
Blank Verse
Blank Verse is poetry written in
unrhymed iambic pentameter
Haiku
Haiku is a 3-line verse form.
First & 3rd lines have five
syllables; 2nd has 7.
Topic is always nature
Elegy
• A poem written for someone who has died,
often a tribute. Most are written in formal
writing and a serious tone.
Dirge
A dirge is a somber song or lament
expressing mourning or grief, such as
would be appropriate for performance at a
funeral.
A funeral song or tune, or one expressing
mourning in commemoration of the dead.
Dirge
COME away, come away, death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
A fourteen-line poem
Expresses author’s feelings
Has a particular end rhyme pattern (ABABCDCD…)
Usually ends in a rhymed couplet (two lines with end rhyme)
Shakespeare wrote over 100 sonnets
Lyric Poetry
a short poem with one speaker (not necessarily
the poet) who expresses thought and feeling.
Though it is sometimes used only for a brief
poem about feeling (like the sonnet). it is more
often applied to a poem expressing the complex
evolution of thoughts and feeling, such as the
elegy, the dramatic monologue, and the ode.
The emotion is or seems personal In classical
Greece, the lyric was a poem written to be sung,
accompanied by a lyre.
Rhyme Scheme
Ode to Dancing:
Ex:
A: antsy
M: merry
Y: young
An epic is a long narrative poem about the
many deeds of a great hero.
•Closely connected to a particular culture. The hero
of an epic embodies the important values of the
society he comes from.
•Essentially, an epic is a long story about the
quests of a hero.
•Think Hercules, and Shrek in poetic form.