Types of Poetry

Narrative : poem that tell a story 

Example :

Fair stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train
Landed King Harry.

Ballads : a poem that can sing as a song

Example :  

Oh the ocean waves may roll,
And the stormy winds may blow,
While we poor sailors go skipping aloft
And the land lubbers lay down below, below, below
And the land lubbers lay down below

Epic : a poem that talk about a hero or heroic

Example :  

By the shore of Gitchie Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited. 

Lyric : a short narrative poems that express the feelings of the speaker

Example : 

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

Sonnet : sonnets are lyric poems that are 14 lines long

Example :  

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass his fickle hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st. 

Odes : Odes are long poems which are serious in nature and written to a set structure 

Example :  

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: 

Elegies : Elegy is a sad and thoughtful poem lamenting the death of a person 

Example :  

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 

Free Verse : Free Verse is a form of Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern. 

Example : 

 I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. 

Lines

Definition : A numbers of word

Significance : Lines help to separate ideas and make it easy to understand

Examples : Imagine if your precious nose <-- Line 1
were sandwiched in between your toes, <---- Line 2
that clearly would not be a treat, <-- line 3
for you'd be forced to smell your feet. <--- line 4

Symbol

Definition : Somethings that represents an ideas

Significance : Symbol make hidden meanings

Example : Yellow = lucky 

Red = blood

Onomatopoeia

Definition : Onomatopoeia is a figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds

Significance : it make the poem more lively

Example : Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!
One for the master, one for the dame,
And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Assonance

Definition : Similar vowels sound

Significance : Sounds that sound the same

Example : Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats

Alliteration

Definition : Alliteration is the repetition of the same or similar sounds at the beginning

Significance : Alliteration make your tongue twists

Example : I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street

Meter

Definition : A pattern of stress and unstressed

Significance : Meter make a poem just like a song

Example :

• Dimeter — two feet
• Trimeter — three feet
• Tetrameter — four feet
• Pentameter — five feet
• Hexameter — six feet
• Heptameter — seven feet
• Octameter — eight feet

Elegy

Definition : A sad poem that express the sorrowed 

Significance : To express the sadness to someone has died

Example : The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Couplets

Definition : A pair of lines that is rhyme and it the same meter

Significance : Chinese people use couplets in New Year

Example : ...Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never write, nor no man ever loved.

Rhyme

Definition : The last syllable of each sentence are the same

Significance : It make readings poem fun 

Example :

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses, And all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again!

Find out who or what was Humpty Dumpty

Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.

Rhythm

Definition : The beat of the poem

Significance : Rhythm make the poem like real

Example : By the shore of Gitchie Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

Personification

Definition : A characteristic or a person that can describe other things

Significance : Characteristic can help the reader easy to understand

Example : When the cat look at me, I feel cold

Speaker

Definition : A person that read the poem

Significance : A speaker can make the audience easy to understand if the speaker speak with tone.

Example : A speaker need to know how to stop at a period or a comma.

Tone

Definition : a picture louder than a word

Significance : when reader read the poem, it feel like it read aloud

Example :

There's a patch of old snow in a corner,

That I should have guessed

Was a blow-away paper the rain

Had brought to rest.

 

It is specked with grime as if

Small print overspread it.

The news of a day I've forgotten --

If I ever read it.

Interpretation

Definition : To explain an artwork or picture

Significance : Interpret make the reader understand more about the poem.

Example :

''Twas once in the saddle I used to go dashing,

'Twas once in the saddle I used to go gay,

But I first took to drinking and then to card-playing,

Got shot in the body and I'm dying today." 

 

The Dying Cowboy - Traditional American Poem

Simile

Definition : A figure that us like or as to compare things

Significance : Use simile in a poem to make it more interesting 

Example : He run fast as a Lamborghini

Extended Metaphor

Extended Metaphor : A metaphor that goes forever

Significance : It make the poem more interesting

Example :

He is the pointing gun, we are the bullets of his desire.

All the world's a stage and men and women merely players.

Let me count my loves of thee, my rose garden, my heart, my fixed mark, my beginning and my end.