"Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful" ~Rita Dove
Examples of Poetry
(Click on the name to see an example)
**Note: These are only a few of the many forms of poetry. Feel free to explore others, including songs!
Free Verse
Poetry that does not rhyme or have a regular meter.
Pastiche
Imitates the style of another work, artist or period.
Pantoum
Has four-line stanzas, the 2nd and 4th lines of each stanza repeat as the 1st and 3rd lines of the next stanza, and the last 2nd and 4th lines repeat the 3rd and 1st lines of the first stanza, in that order.
Ghazal
The ghazal is a form poem that uses the art of rhyme and repetition. It is a fairly short poem that is a poetic expression of loss and/or the pain of that loss. For a poem to be considered a true ghazal, it must have no fewer than five couplets. The first couplet ends with the same word. The first couplet introduces a rhyme *inside* the lines, right before the final word. The end word will now repeat at the end of every *second* line of the rest of the couplets. Click here for more.
Haiku
Japanese poetry form that has only one three-line stanza with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second line and 5 syllables in the third line.
Anaphora
Repetition of a word or words at the beginning of two or more successive lines.
Mood
Evokes a certain emotion or feeling from the audience and may be captured by describing the senses or a combination of tone, setting, voice and/or theme.
Ballad
A light, simple song, especially one of sentimental or romantic character with two or more stanzas, sung to the same melody.
Elegy
A light, simple "song," usually penned when longing for or reflecting on someone who is dead. It can also be romantic or nostalgic. It has two or more stanzas, sung to the same melody.
Acrostic
Poetry where the first letter of each line spells out a word, like an acronym.
Sonnet
A poem of 14 lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having 10 syllables per line.
Metaphor or Conceit
A metaphor compares two unlike objects, ideas, thoughts or feelings to provide a clearer description. A conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that controls a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing images and ideas in creative ways, a conceit or metaphor poem illustrates a more sophisticated understanding of comparison.
Ekphrastic
Ekphrastic poetry uses a work of art as inspiration. The poet gives a vivid description of a the piece and explanation of how the poet/speaker is impacted by the experience with the work.
Epistolary
Epistolary poetry is poems that read like letters.
Limerick
A light or humorous verse form of five chiefly anapestic verses of which lines 1, 2, and 5 are of three feet and lines 3 and 4 are of two feet with a rhyme scheme of AABBA.