Poetic Styles and Forms

Reasons to know different styles and forms:

Although you might not be asked specifically about any particular type of poem…

Knowing the different styles and forms will help you answer the multiple choice questions.

Knowing these will also save you time on the essay portion, where you can use a single term (sonnet, villanelle, narrative poem) instead of using multiple sentences to describe that form or style.

Narrative Poems

Tells part or all of a story.

No set form. It may contain lyrical

or descriptive passages, but it’s goal is to tell a story.

"There was three kings into the east,

Three kings both great and high,

And they hae sworn a solemn oath

John Barleycorn should die."

Excerpt from John Barleycorn by Robert Burns

Lyric Poetry

Any poem that is neither dramatic nor narrative is lyric.

Lyrics express an individual’s thoughts and emotions.

Sonnets, elegies, odes, villanelles—and many other forms are lyrics.

Metaphysical Poetry

17th Century men’s poems (Donne, Marvell, Herbert, others) who wrote intellectual, lyrical verses about the nature of thought or feeling.

They were concerned with ideas like ethics, religion, love, etc.

Their work blends emotion and intellectual in a way that many consider far-fetched or obscure.

Romantic Poetry

19th Century movement that involved Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelly, Byron, and Tennyson.

Their work focuses on inner experience and feelings, including dreams and the subconscious.

The individual hero is stressed and often rebels against traditional society.

Romantic Poetry (cont.)

The work deals with cultures of non-classic lands: Nature (in its wilder moods, usually) The exotic, or the pleasures of the exotic The supernatural Christianity Transcendentalism (personal, spiritual revelation)

The work tends to ponder dreamily and reflectively. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by Keats is a Romantic

Poem.

Ballad

Tell engrossing stories about life, death, heroism, love, murder, and betrayal.

Repetition and refrain (repeating phrase or phrases) characterize the ballad.

Authors are sometimes anonymous.

“O I fear ye are poisoned, LordRandall, my son!

O I fear year are poisoned, myhandsome young man!”

“O yes, I am poisoned; Mother, make my bed soon,

For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain

would lie doon.”

Couplet

A poem made up of two rhymed lines, usually in the same meter, but not always.

Couplets rarely stand by themselves as complete poems.

They are usually the building blocks for longer works.

Dramatic Monologue

A poem spoken by one person to a listener who may influence the speaker with a look or action but says nothing.

Most dramatic monologues are addressed directly to a person who does not speak but is present on stage or in the scene.

Some of Shakespeare’s major characters’ speeches are dramatic monologues.

Juliet’s balcony scene speech is dramatic monologue.

Elegy

A poem of mourning or meditation, usually about the death of a person but sometimes other losses.

The tone is usually solemn and dignified.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.

Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

O could I lose all father now! For why

Will man lament the state he should envy?

Limerick

A lighter, non-serious form of poetry.

Five lines make it very simple, with two rhymes and the third and fourth lines shorter than the others.

The last line usually expresses something to provoke curiosity or thought.

There was an Old Person whose habits,Induced him to feed upon rabbits;When he'd eaten eighteen,He turned perfectly green,Upon which he relinquished those habits.

Ode

A celebratory poem. Highly lyrical or

profoundly philosophical.

They pay respect and honor a person, place, object or abstract idea.

Sonnet

Fourteen line lyric poems expressing one main thought or sentiment in iambic pentameter.

Sonnets are usually Italian Sonnets (Patrarchan Sonnets) or English Sonnets (Shakespearian Sonnets).

Italian Sonnets

Divided into two units: Octave: first eight lines rhymed (a-b-b-a a-b-

b-a) Sestet: remaining six lines usually tend to

rhyme (c-d-c-d-c-d or c-d-e-c-d-e) The octave usually present the idea or

problem and the sestet usually presents the solution, or at least comments on the octave.

English Sonnets

Consists of the following: Three quatrains (lines of four) with a particular

rhyme scheme, then a rhyming couplet with a new rhyme.

a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-f-e-f-g-g

Villanelle

Nineteen line poem. Five three-line

stanzas. Sixth stanza is a

quatrain. They are usually light

in tone, and it usually is only based on two rhymes.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.