FORMS+OF+POETRY

__**Open Forms:**__ An 'open' arrangement or method used to convey the content of a poem.
• **Open**: poetic form free from regularity and consistency in elements such as rhyme, line length, and metrical form

• **Free Verse**: lines with no prescribed pattern or structure — the poet determines all the variables as seems appropriate for each poem

• **Couplet**: a pair of lines, usually rhymed; this is the shortest stanza

• **Quatrain**: a four-line stanza, or a grouping of four lines of verse

is one), is called a fixed form.
• **Ballad**: a narrative poem written as a series of quatrains in which lines of iambic tetrameter alternate with iambic trimeter with an xaxa, xbxb rhyme scheme with frequent use of repetition and often including a refrain. The “story” of a ballad can be a wide range of subjects but frequently deals with folklore or popular legends. They are written in a straight-forward manner, seldom with detail, but always with graphic simplicity and force. Most ballads are suitable for singing: “Barbara Allen” is an example. Many of the oldest ballads were first written and performed by minstrels as court entertainment. Folk ballads are of unknown origin and are usually lacking in artistic finish. Because they are handed down by oral tradition, folk ballads are subject to variations and continual change. Other types of ballads include literary ballads, combining the natures of epic and lyric poetry, which are written by known authors, often in the style and form of the folk ballad, such as Keats’ ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci.”

• **Ballade**: a French form, it consists of three seven or eight-line stanzas using no more than three recurrent rhymes, with an identical refrain after each stanza and a closing envoi repeating the rhymes of the last four lines of the stanza

• **Concrete Poetry**: also known as pattern poetry or shaped verse, these are poems that are printed on the page so that they form a recognizable outline related to the subject, thus convey- ing or extending the meaning of the words. Pattern poetry retains its meaning when read aloud, whereas the essence of concrete poetry lies in its appearance on the page rather than in the words; it is intended to be perceived as a visual whole and often cannot be effective when read aloud. This form has had brief popularity at several periods in history.

• **Epigram**: a pithy, sometimes satiric, couplet or quatrain comprising a single thought or event and often aphoristic with a witty or humorous turn of thought

• **Epitaph**: a brief poem or statement in memory of someone who is deceased, used as, or suitable for, a tombstone inscription; now, often witty or humorous and written without intent of actual funerary use

• **Haiku**: a Japanese form of poetry consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. The elusive flavor of the form, however, lies more in its touch and tone than in its syllabic structure. Deeply imbedded in Japanese culture and strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism, haiku are very brief descriptions of nature that convey some implicit insight or essence of a moment. Traditionally, they contain either a direct or oblique reference to a season

• **Limerick**: a light or humorous form of five chiefly anapestic verses of which lines one, two and five are of three feet and lines three and four are of two feet, with a rhyme scheme of aabba. Named for a town in Ireland of that name, the limerick was popularized by Edward Lear in his Book of Nonsense published in 1846, and is generally considered the only fixed form of English origin. While the final line of Lear’s limericks usually was a repetition of the first line, modern limericks generally use the final line for clever witticisms and word play. Their content also frequently tends toward the ribald and off-color.

• **Lyric**: derived from the Greek word for lyre, lyric poetry was originally designed to be sung. One of the three main groups of poetry (the others being narrative and dramatic), lyric verse is the most frequently used modern form, including all poems in which the speaker’s ardent expression of a (usually single) emotional element predominates. Ranging from complex thoughts to the simplicity of playful wit, the melodic imagery of skillfully written lyric poetry evokes in the reader’s mind the recall of similar emotional experiences.

• **Ode**: any of several stanzaic forms more complex than the lyric, with intricate rhyme schemes and irregular number of lines, generally of considerable length, always written in a style marked by a rich, intense expression of an elevated thought praising a person or object. “Ode to a Nightingale” is an example.

• **Pantoum**: derived from the Malayan pantun, it consists of a varying number of four-line stanzas with lines rhyming alternately; the second and fourth lines of each stanza repeated to form the first and third lines of the succeeding stanza, with the first and third lines of the first stanza forming the second and fourth of the last stanza, but in reverse order, so that the opening and closing lines of the poem are identical.

• **Rondeau**: a fixed form used mostly in light or witty verse, usually consisting of fifteen octo- or decasyllabic lines in three stanzas, with only two rhymes used throughout. A word or words from the first part of the first line are used as a (usually unrhymed) refrain ending the second and third stanzas, so the rhyme scheme is aabba aabR aabbaR. An example is “ In Flanders Fields,” by Lt. Col. John McCrae.

• **Sestina**: a fixed form consisting of six 6-line (usually unrhymed) stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order, and as the middle and end words of each of the lines of a concluding envoi in the form of a tercet. The usual ending word order for a sestina is as follows: First stanza, 1- 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 Second stanza, 6 - 1 - 5 - 2 - 4 - 3 Third stanza, 3 - 6 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 5 Fourth stanza, 5 - 3 - 2 - 6 - 1 - 4 Fifth stanza, 4 - 5 - 1 - 3 - 6 - 2 Sixth stanza, 2 - 4 - 6 - 5 - 3 - 1 Concluding tercet: middle of first line - 2, end of first line - 5 middle of second line - 4, end of second line - 3 middle if third line - 6, end of third line - 1

• **Sonnet**: a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with a prescribed rhyme scheme; its subject was traditionally love. Three variations are found frequently in English, although others are occasionally seen.

• **Shakespearean Sonnet:** a style of sonnet used by Shakespeare with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg

• **Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet**: a form of sonnet made popular by Petrarch with a rhyme scheme of abbaabba cdecde or cdcdcd

• **Spenserian Sonnet**: a variant of the Shakespearean form in which the quatrains are linked with a chain or interlocked rhyme scheme, abab bcbc cdcd ee.

• **Sonnet Sequence**: a series of sonnets in which there is a discernable unifying theme, while each retains its own structural independence. All of Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example, were part of a sequence.

• **Triolet**: a poem or stanza of eight lines in which the first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines, and the second line as the eighth, with a rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB, as in Adelaide Crapsey’s “Song” (the capital letters in the rhyme scheme indicate the repetition of identical lines).

• **Villanelle**: a poem consisting of five 3-line stanzas followed by a quatrain and having only two rhymes. In the stanzas following the first stanza, the first and third lines of the first stanza are repeated alternately as refrains. They are the final two lines of the concluding quatrain. The villanelle gives a pleasant impression of simple spontaneity, as in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “The House on the Hill.”