INTRODUCTION TO

POETRY
Forms of Poetry

Stanza
We lead

Two or more lines of poetry that forms a

division of a poem
Stanzas share a common pattern, consisting
of meter , length and rhyme
Types of stanza:
a. Couplet : two lines stanza that rhymes
b. Tercet : three lines stanza
c. Quatrain : 4 lines stanza , most common
form of poetry

Alliterative Verse
We lead

Common in Germanic, Celtic and Latin.

Poems that use repetitions at the same beginning letters in the words
succeeding each other
e.g. She sells sea shells on the sea shore.

Dewdrops Dancing Down Daisies

By Paul Mc Cann
Don't delay dawns disarming display .
Dusk demands daylight .
Dewdrops dwell delicately
drawing dazzling delight .
Dewdrops dilute daisies domain.
Distinguished debutantes . Diamonds defray delivered
daylights distilled daisy dance .

Analogy Poetry
We lead

Poems which are comparing two seemingly unlike

objects
Highlights the relationship between the two objects
Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Ballad
We lead

Poems that tells story often folk tales or legends.

Highlighting on love and are usually sung hence the term
ballads when referring to slow love songs.
It is an ancient mariner
And he stoppeth one of three.
"By thy long grey beard and
glittering eye,
Now wherefore stoppest thou me?
The bridegroom's doors are opened
wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
Mayst hear the merry din."
He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.
"Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard
loon!"
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.
He holds him with his glittering eye
The wedding-guest stood still,
And listens like a three-years' child:
The mariner hath his will.
The wedding-guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;

"The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,

Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
The sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
Rime
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.

of the Ancient
Mariner

Higher and higher every day, by Samuel

Till over the mast at noon "
The wedding-guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The wedding-guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed mariner.

Coleridge

Ballade
We lead

Though
French
verse form of poetry
all the critics' canons

grow
seedier
than
the actors'
Far
With
three
stanzas
of seven, eight or ten lines. Final
own
stanza is shorter with four or five lines.
Although the cottage-door's
too A
low
Ballade Of Theatricals by G.K. Chesterton (1912
Although the fairy's twenty
Has been as stony-broke as stone
stone
Believe me, there are real things
Although, just like the
There is an hour when all men go;
telephone,
An hour when man is all alone.
She comes by wire and not by
When idle minstrels in a row
wings,
Went down with all the bugles blown
Though all the mechanism's
When brass and hymn and drum went d
known
Down in death's throat with thundering
Believe me, there are real
Ah, though the unreal things have grow
things.
Believe me, there are real things.
Yes, real people even so
Prince, though your hair is not your ow
Even in a theatre, truth is
And half your face held on by strings,
known,
And if you sat, you'd smash your thron
Though the agnostic will not
Believe me, there are real things.
know,
And though the gnostic will

Cinquain
We lead

Created by American poet Adelaide Crapsey,

influenced by Japanese poem haiku.
Contains 5 lines :
Line 1 is one word (the title) I stress
Line 2 is two words describing the title 2 stresses
Line 3 is three words describing the action 3
stresses
Line 4 is four words expressing the feeling 4
stresses
Line 5 is one word Listen...
that 1 stress
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
(by Adelaide Crapsey)

Couplet Poetry
We lead

A stanza with only two lines.

Usually found in Shakespearean sonnets at the end
of the sonnets
Couplets can rhyme but it is not an essential
requirement.

Concrete Poem
We lead

A poem that takes up the object it is describing

No specific rhyming scheme or pattern
Triangle
I
am
a very
special
shape I have
three points and
three lines straight.
Look through my words
and you will see, the shape
that I am meant to be. I'm just
not words caught in a tangle. Look
close to see a small triangle. My angles
add to one hundred and eighty degrees, you
learn this at school with your abc's. Practice your
maths and you will see, some other fine examples of me.

Elegy
We lead

A poem focusing on death of a person. Can also be of

different types of sadness
Tone of mourning and somber. Mood is usually thoughtful
and reflective.

"Elegy on His Cat"

by Joachim Du Bellay
I have not lost my rings, my purse,
My gold, my gems-my loss is worse,
One that the stoutest heart must move.
My pet, my joy, my little love,
My tiny kitten, my Belaud,
I lost, alas, three days ago.

Haiku
We lead

Japanese poetry comprises of three unrhymed lines

containing five, seven and five syllables.
Originated in the 16th century
Usually highlights nature as its theme.
None is travelling
by Basho (1644-1694)
None is travelling
Here along this way but I,
This autumn evening.
The first day of the year:
thoughts come - and there is loneliness;
the autumn dusk is here.

Limerick
We lead

Often humorous and tongue-in-cheek poems consisting

of five lines
Lines 1, 2 and 5 have seven to ten syllables and they
rhyme with one another
Lines 3 and 4 have five to seven syllables and they
rhyme with each other

There was a Young Lady whose chin

Resembled the point of a pin:
So she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
nd played several tunes with her chin.
- Edward Lear

There once was a man from Per

Who had a lot of growing up to d
Hed ring a doorbell,
then run like hell,
Until the owner shot him with a
- Anonymous

Ode
We lead

Like epics, odes are long poems.

Serious in tone and written in a specific structure
Often

Excerpt of Ode To A Nightingale

meditative inby
nature
John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness
pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had
drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had
sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,--That thou, light-winged Dryad of the
trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows
numberless,

Nonsense Poem
We lead

Humorous or whimsical verse that differs from other comic

verse in its resistance to any rational or allegorical
interpretation (
http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/417831/nonsense
-verse
)
Sometimes are written in coined, meaningless words like in
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
AUNTY
FLO
Fun and
light in
tone and mood
By Mervin Peake

When Aunty Flo

Became a Crow
She had a bed put in a tree;
And there she lay
And read all day
Of ornithology.

CROCODILES
By Mervin Peake

She stared at him as hard as she

Could stare, but not a single blush
Suffused his face like dawn at sea
Or roses in a bush For crocodiles are very slow
At taking hints because their hide's
So thick it never feels de trop,
And tender like a bride's.

Rhyme Royal
We lead

Poetry introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer

Consists of seven lines in iambic pentameter
Rhyming scheme usually is a-b-a-b-b-c-c
Used in long narrative poems during the Middle Ages

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember
excerpt from They Flee
From Me That
Sometime Did Me
Seek by Thomas Wyatt

Sonnets
We lead

Lyrical poems
Consisting of 14 lines with 3 quatrains and an ending couplet
English or Shakespearean sonnets
Two quatrain and six-line sextet found in Italian or Petrarchan
sonnets
Sonnet 50 William Shakespeare
How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek (my weary travel's end)
Doth teach that case and that repose to say
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy
friend.'
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed being made from
thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side,

Triolet
We lead

A form of French verse. Often used to express humour in

English poetry. However, some are used to evoke spiritual
feelings.
It has 8 lines :
first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh line
- second line is repeated in the eighth line
We Poets
by LuAnn Kennedy (1984 present)
We poets are so very strange!
We write and write and lose our minds!
Emotions flow in quite a range;
We poets are so very strange!
Were happy. Then, we quickly change;
To make a world it takes all kinds.
We poets are so very strange!
We write and write and lose our minds

Romanticism Poetry
We lead

Popular in the 18th and 19th century

XXXII
Revolved around the themes
of nature and love. Emphasis on
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
personal experience
The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too
soon
And quickly tied to make a lasting troth.
Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly
loathe;
And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man's love !--more like an out-of-tune
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth
To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in
haste,
Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.
I did not wrong myself so, but I placed
A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float
'Neath master-hands, from instruments
defaced,--

Free Verse
We lead

Poems which have no specific rhyming scheme or metrical

patterns
Breaking free from traditional and rigidity no convention that
the poet has to adhere to
Beginning from the 20th century

Little Father
by Li-Young Lee (1957-present )

I buried my father in my heart.

Now he grows in me, my strange son,
My little root who wont drink milk,
Little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night,
Little clock spring newly wet
In the fire, little grape, parent to the future
Wine, a son the fruit of his own son,
Little father I ransom with my life.

Thank you

Presented by
Dr Amelia Abdullah | School of Educational Studies/
USM