Poetic Types/Structures

Epigram

A brief witty poem, often satirical, often using contrast. The epigram is also a verse form, usually brief and pointed.

Quatrain

A four-line stanza.

Epic

A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero.

Ode

A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form.

Ballad

A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. It is specifically written to be sung and always has a repeating refrain and is always narrative in form

Villanelle

A nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain.

Ars Poetica

A poem about poetry

Couplet

A poem or section consisting of two successive lines, usually rhyming and having the same meter and forming a complete thought.

Stichic

A poem which is a continuous sequence of lines without any division into stanzas.

Refrain

A repeated line, phrase, sentence, etc. which appears throughout a poem.

Rhyme Royal

A seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval poets.

Elegy

A solemn, sorrowful poem or meditation about death in general or specifically for one who is dead.

Soliloquy

A speech in which a character who is alone speaks his or her thoughts aloud. A monologue also has a single speaker, but the monologuist speaks to others who do not interrupt.

Terza rima

A three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc.

Tercet

A three-line stanza.

Lyric poem

A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. Songlike; characterized by emotion, subjectivity, and imagination.

Open Form

A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. Free verse.

Octave

An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet.

Scansion

Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet, marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the syllables

Closed Form

Fixed form. A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern.

Blank Verse

Iambic Pentameter that doesn't rhyme.

Continuous Form

Lines follow each other without any type of structural organization except by blocks of meaning.

Sonnet

Normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Italian, or Petrachan, sonnet is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Aubade

Poetry referring to either the dawn, a love song or about parting lovers.

Didactic Poetry

Poetry with a directly morally teaching purpose.

Free Verse

Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme but still rhythmical

Rhetorical Poetry

Poetry written in superfluous language with the intention of being overdramatic.

Eulogy

Speech in praise of someone's life. Can have poetic qualities that make it like an elegy.

Didactic

Teacher like or parable like tone.

Envoy

The concluding portion of a prose work or a play

Alexandrine

Twelve-syllable poetic line of French origin.

Heroic Couplet

Two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit.

Limerick

a five-line poem written with one couplet and one triplet. The rhyme pattern is a a b b a with lines

Doggerel

a light verse which is humorous and comic by nature - often viewed with disdain as containing little literary value.

Pastoral Poetry

a literary work dealing with the lives of shepherds or rural life in general and typically drawing a contrast between the innocence and serenity of a simple life and the misery and corruption of city and especially court life

Dramatic Monologue

a monologue that shares many features with a speech from a play: one person speaks, and in that speech there are clues to his/her character, the character of the implied person or people that s/he is speaking to, the situation in which it is spoken and the story that has led to this situation

Sestetina

a poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy

Lament

a poem that expresses grief, not necessarily about death

Haiku

an unrhymed 17 syllable poem of Japanese origin. It usually has a seasonal reference. It is a tercet with line 1 having 5 syllables, line 2 having 2 - 7 syllables, and line 3 having 3 - 5 syllables

Narrative

poetry that has a plot.