Whether you’re a student hoping to learn about poetry or a poet looking for a new challenge, poetic forms help provide structure and rules for writing, reading, and analyzing poems. By placing restrictions on the number of words or syllables in a line, the number of lines in a verse, and the number of verses in a poem, poetic forms force poets to express their thoughts with a particular rhythm and rhyme. This in turn forces readers and students to read poems with a certain mellifluousness and to puzzle out their meanings, which may be somewhat obscured by the contrived language.
Identifying the type of poem is the first step to understanding its structure, which can in turn help reveal its meaning. Here is an explanation of the ten major poetic forms.
The Acrostic Poem
The acrostic is a fairly simple poetic form, and odds are just about everyone has written one, whether they realize it or not. An acrostic poem is created by using the first letter of each line to spell out another, usually related, word. That is, by reading down the left margin, the reader discovers a word. In simple acrostic poems, this may be the subject of the poem (such as when grade-school students write descriptive words for each letter in “Mother” on their Mother’s Day cards).
The Concrete Poem
The concrete or image poem is another simple form often practised in school. In this type of poem, a single word is written repeatedly to create the shape of the object the word describes. For example, the word “apple” would be written to form the shape of an apple.
The Cinquain
Pronounced “sink-cane”, this type of poem is named after the French word for five because it consists of a single five-line verse. Each line has a specific syllable count, namely two, four, six, eight, two. Many variations also exist, such as the reverse cinquain, in which the syllable counts are two, eight, six, four, two, and the mirror cinquain, which consists of two five-line verses, a cinquain and a reverse cinquain.
The Free Verse Poem
Perhaps the most common poetic form today, free verse allows a poet to create his or her own form, placing virtually no restrictions on the number of syllables per line, lines per verse, or verses per poem. However, the poem still must have a recognizable form that will be coherent to readers.
The Ghazal
Based on Urdu poetry and originating in the 6th century, the ghazal (pronounced like “guzzle”) consists of five to fifteen couplets (usually seven) with a refrain of one or a few words repeated at the end of each of the first two lines and the second line of each subsequent couplet. Additionally, the words before each refrain are usually rhymes or partial rhymes, and each line should be roughly the same length or meter. While the couplets develop a common theme, each one should read like a poem or unit in itself.
The Haiku
Originally a Japanese form, the haiku is a three-line poem with a strict syllable count for each line — namely five, seven, five. Traditionally, haiku poetry had a seasonal reference (in Japanese, “kigo”), and the Japanese haiku were written in a single line. Along with dividing the poem into its three metered units, Western poets have also expanded haiku’s subject area.
The Limerick
While most people probably think of the limerick as an obscene poetic form, it doesn’t have to be. The main point of this five-line poem, rhymed AABBA, is to be witty or humorous; however, this does, on occasion, encourage its practitioners toward lewdness.
The Sestina
Perhaps one of the most difficult poetic forms, the sestina, or sextain, is highly structured. It consists of six six-line stanzas followed by one three-line stanza (called a tercet and referred to as the poem’s “envoy”). The last word of each line is repeated in each stanza in a different, but prescribed, order. If the lines of the first stanza are numbered 123456, then the second stanza ends with words 61524, the third with words 64125, the fourth 532614, the fifth 451362, and the sixth 246531. Words 1 and 2 are then repeated in the first line of the tercet, words 3 and 4 in the second line of the tercet, and words 5 and 6 in the third line of the tercet.
The Sonnet
A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that follow a strict rhyming pattern. There are two types of sonnet, the Shakespearean sonnet, named after William Shakespeare, and the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet consists of twelve lines in three alternating rhymes, followed by a rhyming couplet. That is, its rhyme scheme is ABABCDCDEFEFGG. An Italian sonnet consists eight lines rhyming ABBAABBA followed by six lines rhyming CDECDE.
The Villanelle
A villanelle is a nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets (three lines each) and a closing quatrain (four lines). The poem consists of two main rhymes (AB) which repeat throughout. The main rhyme is produced by the first and third lines of the first stanza, which then alternate as the third line of each subsequent stanza, and form a rhyming couplet to end the quatrain and thus the poem.
There are many other types of poems, including variations of the above forms, but these classic forms provide an excellent starting place for students of poetry or poets in training.
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