Forms of Poetry - Poetry Terminology PDF

There are many forms of poetry. The following are some of the most common: Haiku poems have three lines, and the syllable pattern is 5-7-5, which means that line 1 has 5 syllables, line 2 has 7 syllables, and line 3 has 5 syllables. Haiku poems are often about nature and usually do NOT rhyme....

There are many forms of poetry. The following are some of the most common: Haiku poems have three lines, and the syllable pattern is 5-7-5, which means that line 1 has 5 syllables, line 2 has 7 syllables, and line 3 has 5 syllables. Haiku poems are often about nature and usually do NOT rhyme. Example: All Saints 9 a.m. Students line up for late slips Will they never learn? A limerick is a poem with five lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme with each other and usually have 8 syllables, and lines 3 and 4 rhyme with each other usually have 6 syllables. Here is an example: There once was a student named Mark, Who thought skipping school was a lark, Found out Mr. Cuddy, Was not his good buddy, And scrubbed the school toilets ‘till dark. A concrete poem (also called a shape poem) is where words are arranged on the page to create a picture or pattern which contribute to the poem’s meaning. A love poem might be shaped like a heart. A free verse poem has no rhyme and irregular rhythm. A free verse poem is different from regular writing with sentences and paragraphs because it looks different. Here is an example: I wandered lonely as a cloud, And stopped at Seven-Eleven to buy some smokes, Oh, how I coughed and sputtered as I inhaled the poisonous fumes! I realized…. with a horror much sicker than the facial shade of green that I currently sported …. that I forgot to pay the cashier For the foul, acrid coffin nails that so enslaved me. Oh, how bittersweet are the ramblings of a poet such as I //////behind prison bars//////// 1/4 A ballad is a poem that tells a story. They are often used in songs and have a very musical quality to them. Ballads have both rhyme and rhythm, since many of them are songs. They are often serious and tragic, although they can be humorous. A ballad is written in the first or third person, includes action and dialogue, phrases are repeated in the form of refrains, and the rhyme scheme is usually in quatrains (4-line stanzas) with an abcb rhyming pattern. The rhythm of a ballad is usually 8 (eight) syllables for lines 1 and 3 and 6 (six) syllables for lines 2 and 4. Example: Ballad of Birmingham (1969) (On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963) "Mother dear, may I go downtown Instead of out to play, And march the streets of Birmingham In a Freedom March today?" "No, baby, no, you may not go, For the dogs are fierce and wild, And clubs and hoses, guns and jails Aren't good for a little child." "But, mother, I won't be alone. Other children will go with me, And march the streets of Birmingham T o make our country free." "No, baby, no, you may not go, For I fear those guns will fire. But you may go to church instead And sing in the children's choir." She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair, And bathed rose petal sweet, And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, And white shoes on her feet. The mother smiled to know that her child Was in the sacred place, But that smile was the last smile To come upon her face. For when she heard the explosion, Her eyes grew wet and wild. She raced through the streets of Birmingham Calling for her child. She clawed through bits of glass and brick, Then lifted out a shoe. "O, here's the shoe my baby wore, But, baby, where are you?" 2/4 A Shakespearean sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter rhythm with a specific rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg (i.e. four quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet). Shakespeare wrote many sonnets, and all of his plays are written in iambic pentameter, or blank verse, because he felt that it most closely resembled actual speech. What is iambic pentameter rhythm? Iambic pentameter is a rhythmical pattern of syllables. The "iambic" part means that the rhythm goes from an unstressed syllable to a stressed one, as happens in words like divine, caress, bizarre, and delight. It sounds sort of like a heartbeat: daDUM, daDUM, daDUM. Each iambic unit is called a foot. The "pentameter" part means that this iambic rhythm is repeated five times or has five feet: daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM [da]. Sonnet XVIII Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. A diamante poem is written in the shape of a diamond. It has 7 (seven) lines and is written as follows: First of all, find two nouns that are opposites (eg. winter and summer) Line 1: a noun that names your subject (eg. winter) Line 2: two adjectives that describe the subject (eg. rainy, cold) Line 3: three verbs ending in –ing to show the action of the subject (eg. skiing, skating, sledding) Line 4: four nouns which also relate to your subject but can also relate to an opposite subject (eg. mountains, wind, breeze, ocean) Line 5: three verbs ending in –ing to show the action of the opposite subject (eg. swimming, surfing, scuba diving) Line 6: two adjectives to describe the opposite subject (eg. sunny, hot) Line 7: a noun that names the opposite subject (eg. summer) The diamante poem should look like this: Winter Rainy, cold Skiing, skating, sledding Mountains, wind, breeze, ocean Swimming, surfing, scuba diving Sunny, hot Summer 3/4 A cinquain poem is a five-line poem which is similar to haiku and diamante because it does not rhyme but has a certain rhythm. There are TWO types of cinquain: syllable cinquain and word cinquain. Syllable Cinquain Line 1: 2 syllables Line 2: 4 syllables Line 3: 6 syllables Line 4: 8 syllables Line 5: 2 syllables Example: Tread These be Three silent things: The falling snow…the hour Before the dawn…the mouth of one Just dead. Word Cinquain Line 1: 1 word for an object Line 2: 2 words that define or describe the object Line 3: 3 words that describe an action related to the object Line 4: 4 words that express an attitude toward or an emotional feeling about the object Line 5: 1 word that sums up lines 1-4 Example: Boots Shiny, heavy Marching on stone Establishment on our minds Madness 4/4 ENG2D1 POETRY TERMINOLOGY ALLITERATION The repetition of the same or similar sounds at the beginning of words. Some famous examples of alliteration are tongue twisters such as She sells seashells by the seashore and Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. ASSONANCE The repetition or a pattern of similar sounds, especially vowel sounds, as in the tongue twister "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain." BLANK VERSE Poetry that is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in blank verse. METAPHOR A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is another, or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would be expected. Some examples of metaphors: the world's a stage, he was a lion in battle, drowning in debt, and a sea of troubles METER/RHYTHM The arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of syllables and the rhythm of accented (or stressed) syllables. ONOMATOPOEIA A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples of onomatopoeic words are buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, cock-a-doodle-do, pop, splat, thump, and tick-tock. Another example of onomatopoeia is found in this line from Tennyson's Come Down, O Maid: "The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/And murmuring of innumerable bees." The repeated "m/n" sounds reinforce the idea of "murmuring" by imitating the hum of insects on a warm summer day. PENTAMETER A line of poetry that has five metrical feet. Each “foot” has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. PERSONIFICATION A figure of speech in which nonhuman things or abstract ideas are given human attributes: the sky is crying, dead leaves danced in the wind, blind justice. ENG2D1 QUATRAIN A stanza or poem of four lines. REFRAIN A phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza. RHYME The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words. When the rhyme occurs in a final stressed syllable, it is said to be masculine: cat/hat, desire/fire, observe/deserve. When the rhyme occurs in a final unstressed syllable, it is said to be feminine: pleasure/leisure, longing/yearning. The pattern of rhyme in a stanza or poem is shown usually by using a different letter for each final sound. In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the first, second, and fifth lines end in one sound, and the third and fourth lines end in another. SIMILE A figure of speech in which two things are compared using the word "like" or "as." An example of a simile using like occurs in Langston Hughes's poem Harlem: "What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?" STANZA Two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of meter and rhyme.