This document provides an overview of various poetic forms, including sonnets, haiku, epics, ballads, blank verse, limericks, villanelles, sestinas, and open form poetry. It defines each form's typical structural elements such as line length, rhyme scheme, and meter. Examples of each form are given, usually including the title and page number from the textbook. The document concludes with instructions for group discussions on assigned poems.

1. Form Poetry
Understanding Patterns and Figurative
Language

2. • Refers to various sets of “rules” of certain types of poetry
• The rules may regard rhythm, meter, rhyme scheme, or
alliteration
• Examples: Sonnets, sestinas, haiku, epic, blank verse
Poetic Form

3. • Discuss this poem as a group. What do you notice about
the form? What does the form of the poem do to enhance
the meaning?
• What is the difference between the world depicted on the
urn and the speaker’s world? Which world does the
speaker seem to prefer?
• How would you recognize this poem as an “ode” besides
referring to the title?
John Keats’ “Ode on a
Grecian Urn” p. 825

4. • There are many types of poems.
• Most emerged during the Renaissance period, due to a
change in the way language was being employed
• During this class, we will only go over a few of the major
types of form
Types of Poems

5. • A fixed form of lyric poetry that consists of 14 lines
• Usually written in iambic pentameter—which consists of one
unstressed syllable, followed by one stressed syllable
(“away”).
• The Italian Sonnet is divided into an octave, which typically
rhymes abbaabba and a sestet, which may vary in rhyme.
• The English sonnet is organized into three quatrains and a
couplet, which rhyme abab cdcd efef gg.
• Example p. 976 Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee to a
summer’s day?”
Sonnet

6. • A style of lyric poetry borrowed from the Japanese that
typically presents an intense emotion or vivid image of
nature, which is designed to a spiritual insight.
• Contains seventeen syllables organized into three
unrhymed lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables.
• A reversed haiku/inside-out haiku has 7, 5, 7 syllables in
each line.
• Example: p. 989
Haiku

7. • A long narrative poem.
• Uses formal, elevated language that focuses on a serious
subject and chronicles heroic deeds and events
• Example: Milton’s Paradise Lost
Epic

8. • A ballad is usually sung.
• It began as a song and then was written down to tell a
story.
• Ballads are typically dramatic, condensed, and
impersonal narratives.
Ballad

9. • Unrhymed iambic pentameter (away)
• This is the English Verse form closest to the natural
rhythms of English speech and it is the most common
pattern found in traditional English narrative and
dramatic poetry.
Blank Verse

10. • A light and humorous form.
• Usually consists of 5 predominantly anapestic lines
rhyming aabba.
• Lines 1, 2, and 5 contain three feet, while lines 3 and 4
contain 2.
• Example: p. 987
Limerick

11. • Type of form poetry consisting of 19 lines of any length
divided into 6 stanzas: 5 tercets and a concluding
quatrain.
• The first and third lines of the initial tercet rhyme are
repeated in each subsequent tercet (aba) and in the final
two lines of the quatrain abaa.
• Example: p. 981 Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into
That Good Night”
Villanelle

12. • Sometimes called free verse.
• Does not conform to established patterns of
meter, rhyme, and stanza.
• Example: ee cummings
Open Form

13. • A type of form poetry consisting of 36 lines of any length
divided into 6 sestets and a three-line concluding stanza
called an envoi.
• The six words at the end of the first sestet’s lines must
also appear at the ends of the five other sestet’s in varying
order.
• The six words also appear in the envoi.
Sestina

14. • Write a short response to this poem.
• Is this in form? What is the effect of the rhyme scheme?
• What is the tone?
• In what sense might this celebration of oxygen be
considered a love poem?
Mary Oliver’s “Oxygen” p.
823

15. • Group #1: Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool,” p. 827
• Group #2: Alice Jones’ “The Larynx,” p. 828
• Group #3: Molly Peacock’s “Desire,” p. 979
• Group #4: Brendan Galvin’s “An Evel Knievel Elegy,”
p. 991
• Discuss the effect of the rhyme scheme on the way you
read and understand the poem
• What are the limits of form? What are the
advantages?
Group Discussion