Types of Poems | Grade 8 & 9 | Week 1
So you've made it to a higher level, congratulations. By now you will have done enough poetry to realize that that there are types of poems. Can you remember any of those types? Here's a handy reminder:
There is one more type that is missing from here and that's the "Sonnet" type poems. English poets borrowed the sonnet form from the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch. Traditionally, it has fourteen lines of iambic pentameter linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. Iambic pentameter refers to its rhythm; basically, each line of the poem has ten syllables, and every other syllable is stressed.
The words I've put in bold in the paragraph above are important terms to understand in the field of poetry, and we will be covering them later in this lesson.
Writing poetry is quite easy,
I can make one that's very... cheesy
Rhyming words is little stress
Count your syllables to be the best
See? You can do that! In the picture above, they mention "Ballads" as a type of poem; this is basically a poem that's meant to be sung - modern ones usually talk about love, or expressing praise for something. A lot of your parents favourite love songs are Ballads - like Beyoncé's Halo. A few other are: Elton John's Candle In The Wind, Whitney Houston's The Greatest Love of All, and Celine Dion's A New Day Has Come.
I will be listing individual examples below for the other types of poems:
The Narrative
'Twas The Night Before Christmas - Clement Clarke Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a luster of midday to objects below,
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick...
I had to cut the poem because of it's length, but click source if you want to read the whole poem - Source
Narrative poetry tells stories through verse. Like a novel or a short story, a narrative poem has plot, characters, and setting. Using a range of poetic techniques such as rhyme and meter, narrative poetry presents a series of events, often including action and dialogue. In most cases, narrative poems have only one speaker—the narrator—who relates the entire story from beginning to end.
The Haiku -
“Lighting One Candle” by Yosa Buson
Light of a candle (5)
passed to another candle— (7)
April's twilight sky. (5)
Haikus focus on a brief moment in time, bringing together two images, and creating a sudden sense of enlightenment. A good example of this is haiku master Yosa Buson’s comparison of a singular candle with the starry wonderment of the evening sky in April.
Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry made of short, mostly unrhymed lines that brings to mind natural imagery. Haiku can come in a variety of different formats of short verses, though the most common is a three-line poem with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern.
We're going to skip the "Lyric Poem" because this type is pretty similar to the Ballad. Instead we'll look at
The Sonnet.
The sonnet is a popular classical form that has compelled poets for centuries. Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes, and adhering to a tightly structured thematic organization.
The name is taken from the Italian sonetto, which means "a little sound or song."
Two sonnet forms provide the models from which all other sonnets are formed: the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean.
Petrarchan Sonnet
The first and most common sonnet is the Petrarchan, or Italian. Named after one of its greatest practitioners, the Italian poet Petrarch, the Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two stanzas, the octave (the first eight lines) followed by the answering sestet (the final six lines). The tightly woven rhyme scheme, abba, abba, cdecde or cdcdcd, is suited for the rhyme-rich Italian language, though there are many fine examples in English. Since the Petrarchan presents an argument, observation, question, or some other answerable charge in the octave, a turn, or volta, occurs between the eighth and ninth lines.
Shakespearean Sonnet
The second major type of sonnet, the Shakespearean, or English sonnet, follows a different set of rules. Here, three quatrains and a couplet follow this rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The couplet plays a pivotal role, usually arriving in the form of a conclusion, amplification, or even refutation of the previous three stanzas, often creating an epiphanic quality to the end.
Since you all are students studying English, you will more likely come across the English or Shakespearian sonnet. I have provided an example of this below:
Sonnet 18 - William Shakespeare
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 wand’rest 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.
Concrete type Poems
Concrete poetry—sometimes also called ‘shape poetry’—is poetry whose visual appearance matches the topic of the poem. The words form shapes which illustrate the poem’s subject as a picture, as well as through their literal meaning.
This type of poetry has been used for thousands of years, since the ancient Greeks began to enhance the meanings of their poetry by arranging their characters in visually pleasing ways back in the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BC.
Click on source if you would like to find out more about concrete poetry, and how to write one yourself. - Source.
A diamante poem is a special type of shape poem, made of seven lines of words that are arranged in a special diamond-like form. The word diamante is pronounced DEE - UH - MAN - TAY; it is an Italian word meaning “diamond.” This type of poem does not contain rhyming words.
There are two basic types of diamante poems: an antonym diamante and a synonym diamante.
Antonym Diamante Poem
The first step to writing an antonym diamante poem is to think of two nouns that have opposite meanings.
Because a diamante poem is diamond-like in form, it must begin and end with single words that form the top and bottom. In the antonym form, those words will have the opposite meaning. Your job as a writer is to transition from the first noun to the opposite noun in your descriptive words.
The first step to writing an antonym diamante poem is to think of two nouns that have opposite meanings.
Synonym Diamante Poem
The synonym diamante takes the same form as the antonym diamante, but the first and last words should have the same or similar meaning.
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| Example of an Antonym Diamante |
The Limerick Poem
Now that you are familiar with some types of poems, I have a task for you:
write your own poem.
There are so many types/styles to choose from, and you can always write in your own free-verse style. Check out the templates or guides for tips on writing any one of the poems that you like. This exercise is to be done in your exercise books, which I will check when school opens for face to face teaching. The topic you choose is up to you; and remember that rhyming is not necessary, but it does help. I recommend a poem length of 5 lines and up.
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