The Many Types of Poetry

Poetry is defined as a literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature. The word poetry gives off different feelings and meanings to many different people but one thing is universal about it, poetry is a beautiful writing form that we can all appreciate. There are many ways that poetry can be written. Poetry has structure, form, lines, stanzas, rhyme, prose, among many other terms which all can be used to write it. For this particular post I will be listing the many different types and forms of poetry. I will do my best to list as many as I can. If I miss any please feel free to comment below this post to include them. Here are the many types of poetry:

Prose: written or spoken language in it’s ordinary form, without metrical structure

Blank verse: a poem that does not rhyme especially with the use of iambic pentameter

Rhyme: a pattern of stresses in the line of a verse or stanza

Free verse: poetry that does not rhyme or have any meter

Epics: a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters

Narrative: a form of poetry that tells a story, often using voices of narrator and characters; the story is usually written in metered verse

Haiku: a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five

Sonnet: a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line

Pastoral: explores the fantasy of withdrawing from modern life to live in an idyllic rural setting

Elegies: a meditative lyric poem focusing on the death of a public personage or of a friend or loved one

Ode: A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea

Limerick: a form of verse, usually humorous and frequently rude, in five-line, predominantly anapestic trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, in which the first, second and fifth line rhyme, while the third and fourth lines are shorter and share a different rhyme

Lyric: is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person

Ballad: is a verse form consisting of three main stanzas and one concluding stanza called an envoi, each of which culminates in a repeated last line

Soliloquy: a monologue in which a character in a play expresses thoughts and feelings while being alone on stage

Villanelle: a nineteen-line poem with two rhymes throughout, consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, with the first and third lines of the opening tercet recurring alternately at the end of the other tercets and with both repeated at the close of the concluding quatrain

Acrostic: a poem or other word composition in which the first letter of each new line spells out a word, message or the alphabet.

Ekphrastic: poems written about works of art

Concrete: an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance

Epigram: a short, pithy saying, usually in verse, often with a quick, satirical twist at the end

Epitaph: A short poem intended for (or imagined as) an inscription on a tombstone and often serving as a brief elegy

Chain verse: a type of poetic technique where the poet uses the last syllable of a line and repeats it as the first syllable of the line following

*Rhyming Chain verse: a type of poetic technique where the poet rhymes the first word with the last word in the following sentence and the last word in the first sentence with the first word of the following sentence

*-created by me