Staff Writer Rebecca holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. She teaches courses in composition, literature, and the arts. When she’s not reading or grading papers, she’s hanging out with her husband and son and/or riding her bike and/or buying books. She can't get enough of reading and writing about books, so she writes the bookish newsletter "Reading Indie," focusing on small press books and translations.Newsletter: Reading IndieTwitter: @ofbooksandbikes View All posts by Rebecca Hussey
Rebecca Hussey
- Sonnet
- Haiku
- Villanelle
- Sestina
- Acrostic
- Ekphrastic
- Concrete, or visual poetry
- Elegy
- Epigram
- Limerick
- Ballad
- Epitaph
- Tanka
- Ode
- Free verse
For each type of poem definition, I’ve also given some examples so you can get a sense of what that form is like. Take a look and see what inspires you!
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Sonnet
When you think about poetic forms, the sonnet might be the first one to come to mind. It’s an old, old form that originated in Italy in the 13th century. There are two common forms, both of which have lots of rules, should you want to follow the rules: the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean (or Elizabethan). Sonnets traditionally have 14 lines and are often about love—lost love, married love, forgotten love, the longing for love, etc, etc. Petrarchan sonnets typically have an ABBA ABBA CDE CDE rhyme scheme, and Shakespearean sonnets are usually ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. They are written in iambic pentameter.
But always remember that rules are made to be broken! You are welcome to consider these guidelines mere suggestions if you like.
William Shakespeare, “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds.” For a super-traditional Shakespearean sonnet, of course we are going to look to the master!
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why.” Millay messes with the rhyme scheme a bit here, but otherwise, this is a great example of a Petrarchan sonnet.
Haiku
Because haiku are very short poems, they make common school assignments and writing exercises, so you may have written one of these before. The haiku is a Japanese form that arose in the 17th century, most famously in the writing of Matsuo Bashō.
Typically a haiku has 17 syllables, arranged in three lines, first five syllables, then 7, then 5. Haiku are most commonly about nature, often containing a seasonal reference. They tend to contain two juxtaposed images or ideas.
Matsuo Bashō, “By the Old Temple”
Matsuo Bashō, “An Old Silent Pond”
Natsume Soseki, “The Lamp Once Out”
More haiku are available here.
Villanelle
The villanelle, like the sonnet, is an old form with lots of rules. The good thing about writing a villanelle is that there’s a lot of repetition, so once you have some of the lines chosen, you get to use them again and again. But making meaning out of that much repetition is challenging.
Here are the details: villanelles are 19 lines, organized into five stanzas of three lines each, and one closing stanza of four lines. The rhyme scheme is ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA. Notice there are only two rhyming sounds here! In addition, line 1 gets repeated in lines 6, 12, and 18. Line 3 gets repeated in lines 9, 15, and 19. So many rules!
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” This is probably the most famous villanelle. It follows the rules of the form perfectly.
Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art.” This one does not follow the rules perfectly, although it’s pretty close. When it breaks the rules, it does so with a purpose. This one is my favorite.
Sestina
Here’s another old poetic form, in this case coming out of 12th-century Provence. Like the villanelle, it has a lot of repetition, but unlike the villanelle, sestinas don’t have to rhyme. The sestina has six stanzas of six lines each, and a closing stanza of three lines. The six words that end the lines of the first stanza get repeated at the line endings of each of the remaining stanzas, and all six words appear in the poem’s final three lines. Here is a great description of the order these six words should appear in.
Elizabeth Bishop, “Sestina.”
Alberto Alvaro Rios, “Nani“
Acrostic
Here is a fun form: spell out a name, word, or phrase with the first letter of each line of your poem. You can write a love poem using the name of your beloved this way!
Edgar Allan Poe, “An Acrostic.”
Sathya Narayana, “Nuggets“
Ekphrastic Poetry
This type of poem doesn’t have particular rules for form: unlike the forms above, you can write it however you like. What it is, instead, is a poem about a work of art: a painting, a statue, perhaps a photograph. It’s art about art, written in response to visual art that inspires the poet.
Tyehimba Jess, “Hagar in the Wilderness.”
Rebecca Wolff, “Ekphrastic.”
concrete POetry
Concrete poetry, or shape poetry, or visual poetry, is meant to look a particular way on the page: it’s written to form a particular image or shape that enhances the poem’s meaning. In its cheesy form, a concrete poem might be a love poem written in the shape of a heart. But here are some better examples:
May Swenson, “Women.” This poem is about how women are expected be “pedestals moving to the motions of men,” and the poem itself illustrates the swaying women are supposed to do at the will of men.
George Herbert, “Altar.”
Elegy
Like ekphrastic poetry above, this type of poem doesn’t have to fit a particular form; instead, it’s defined by its subject, which is death. An elegy is a poem of mourning, often for a particular person, but it can be about a group of people or about a broader sense of loss. Elegies often move from mourning toward consolation.
Walt Whitman, “O Captain, My Captain.”
Mary Jo Bangs, “You Were You Are Elegy.”
Kwame Dawes, “Requiem.”
Epigram
Want to write something short? Try your hand at an epigram. All you have to do is be brilliant and witty in a few lines — easy! Epigrams don’t have to be poems, but they often are. They are short and witty, often satirical, and have a surprising and funny ending.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Epigram“
Emily Dickinson, “‘Faith’ is a Fine Invention“
Limerick
On the subject of funny poems, next is the limerick. You’re probably familiar with the limerick form, even if you don’t get the details of it, because its sound is so distinctive: two longer lines, two short ones, and a closing longer line that makes a joke, often a ribald one. If you want the technical details, here you go: limericks have a rhyme scheme of AABBA and use anapestic meter, with three feet in the longer lines and two in the shorter.
Ballad
If you want to read a story or tell a story in a poem, the ballad is for you. It’s an old, traditional form that used to be passed down orally from one generation to the next. Ballads, if you want to follow the rules of the form strictly, are written in quatrains, groups of four lines, and have a rhyme scheme of ABAB or ABCB. The lines alternate between having eight syllables and six syllables. But the ballad is a loose enough form that you can make of it whatever you want.
Anonymous, “Barbara Allen.” Here’s the first stanza:
In Scarlet town, where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwellin’,
Made every youth cry Well-a-way!
Her name was Barbara Allen.
Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee.”
epitaph
The epitaph is like the elegy, only shorter. It’s the kind of poem that might appear on a gravestone, although it doesn’t have to. It’s brief and it pays tribute to a person who has passed away or commemorates some other loss.
Robert Herrick, “Upon a Child That Died”
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Epitaph“
Tanka
The tanka (which means “short poem”) is a Japanese form that is five lines. The first and third lines have five syllables (in the English version of the form) and the other lines have seven syllables each. The subject of the poem can be nature, as it generally is for haiku, but this isn’t required.
Sadakichi Hartmann, “Tanka“
Philip Appleman, “Three Haiku, Two Tanka.”
Ode
An ode is simply a poem address to a particular person, event, or thing. It’s often meant to praise or glorify its subject. The ode as a form comes from ancient Greece and there are various ode types available, but basically if you are addressing something/someone directly, you are writing an ode.
Pablo Neruda, “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market.” Here is how the poem begins:
Here,
among the market vegetables,
this torpedo
from the ocean
depths,
a missile
that swam,
now
lying in front of me
dead.
Phillis Wheatley, “Ode to Neptune.”
Free Verse
This is the form of poetry where you can do whatever you want! There are no rules! You don’t use regular patterns of rhythm or rhyme, don’t need lines of any particular length, or stanzas of a particular number of lines. This is both liberating and terrifying. Yes, you can do whatever you want…which means it can be hard to know where to start. But give it a try and enjoy the freedom of it!
Nikki Giovanni, “Winter Poem“
Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B.”
This is a fairly lengthy list but it’s only just the beginning when it comes to understanding and appreciating different types of poems. If you want to learn more, I highly recommend the Poetry Foundation website. Or you can read more Book Riot articles on the subject: Click here for an introduction to how to read poetry. To explore more articles on poetry, click here. Have fun!
