Forms of Poetry

Haiku
3 lines, 5-7-5 syllables, one sustained thought that uses descriptive, figurative
language; usually relates to nature
The falling flower
I saw drift back to the branch
Was a butterfly.

The broken branches:

Their glazed and blackened scrolls etch
A winter message.

Warming red fruit strewn

In heavy-hanging orchards.
Apple cider soon.

Ruffled edges dance

In steaming, bubbling butter.
Eggs over easy.

Tanka
5 lines, 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern, descriptive, figurative language
The rippling sea swell
Curling upon the golden sand
And, winding over
A bough of cherry blossoms.
Youth shielding eternal age.

Sitting face to face,

Silent as the night, waiting
To settle what could
Become a problem that day.
Two cats glared at each other.

Cinquain
5 lines, unrhymed, in a prescribed order: noun; 2 adjectives, 3 present
participles; a 4-word phrase; synonym for 1st noun
Can also be a progression of syllables in 5 lines: 2 syllables, 1 word, giving title;
4 syllables, 2 words, describing title; 6 syllables, three words, expressing action;
8 syllables, four words, expressing a feeling; 2 syllables, another word for the
title
The Tree
Lead to Another
Sycamore
Argument
Stately, serene
Talk, disagree
Towering, waiting, watching
Yelling, fighting, shooting.
The desired waterway pointer
Cruelly hurting each other,
Sentinel
War

Diamonte
7 lines, in a prescribed order, similar to a cinquain but instead of building toward
a synonym, builds toward an antonym; noun, two adjectives, three present
participles, four nouns the first two relate to the first noun and the second two
describe the 7th line antonym, three present participles that relate to the antonym,
two adjectives for the antonym, then the antonym
Food
Fresh, crisp
Simmering, cooking, nourishing
Delicacies, appetizers, leftovers, scraps
Chewing, softening, absorbing,
Remnants, discards
Garbage
Rain
White, wet
Sprinkling, splashing, dancing
Umbrellas, clouds, shorts, t-shirts
Playing, running, swimming
Gold, hot
Sun

Acrostic

Day
Brave, exciting
Riding, hopping, skipping
Friends, games, rest, sleep
Thinking, dreaming, hoping
Alone, afraid
Night

Unfed stomach
Empty, hungry
Growling, shrinking, hurting
Lonely, crumbs, food, social
Eating, gorging, overdoing
Full, bloated
Feast

A rhymed and/or metered poem that has the main idea written vertically and each
line begins with the letter of the word on that line; words and phrases paint a
mental picture
People
Readily argue and hurt
Others,
But
Luckily, most
Everyone
Makes up
Sometime.

Leaves flutter to the ground as

Echoes of summer swimming drift away.
Apple cider, simmering on the stove, encourages
Visions of pumpkin pie with whipped cream.
Emeralds turn to rubies and citrines;
Sidewalks are covered in crunchy copper pennies.

Couplets a poem with stanzas of two lines that rhyme, AA

Here a pretty baby lies
Sung asleep with lullabies.
Pray be silent and do not stir
The easy earth that covers her.
Robert Herrick (1592-1674)

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen.
Alexander Pope

Tercet or triplet a stanza of three lines, AAB, AAA, ABB, ABA

A still small voice spake unto me,
Life is so full of misery.
Were it better not to be?

He clasps the crag with crooked hands Close

to the sun it lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, it stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Then to the still small voice I said:

The Eagle, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(1809-92)

Let me not cast in endless shade

What is so wonderfully made.
The Two Voices, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Quatrain a stanza of four lines, AABB, ABAB, ABBA, ABCB

Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules,
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
Columbus, Joaquin Miller
Take back your heart, the bitter words
She spoke with lips a-quiver
Take back your heart, dense butcher-man,
You know I ordered liver.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night.
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake
Miss Amelia May Hortense
Tried to scale a barbed wire fence.
When she finished with the climb,
She had had a ripping time.

Chain Verse a rhymed or metered poem of any number of stanzas; the first line
of each new stanza repeats the last line of the previous stanza
My spirit longeth for thee Of so divine a guest
Within my troubled breast Unworthy though I be,
Although I be unworthy Yet has my heart no rest,
Unless it comes from thee.
Of so divine a guest.
No rest is to be found . . .
But in thy blessed love,
Oh let my wish be crowned,

Unless it comes from thee,

In vain I look around
In all that I can see
No rest is to be found.

Concrete
A poem arranged to capture and extend the meaning of the poem.
There was an old decanter
and its mouth was gaping
wide; the rosy wine had
ebbed away and left
its crystal side,
and the wind
went humming
-humming up
and down; the
wind flew. And
through the reedlike hollow neck the
wildest notes it blew.
I placed it in the window
where the blast was blowing free and fancied that its
pale mouth sang the queerest
strains to me. They tell me, puny
conquerors, The Plague has slain his ten,
and war his hundred thousand of the very
best of men; but I, twas thus the bottle spake,
but I have conquered more than all your famous
conquerors, so feared and famed of yore. Then come,
ye youths and maidens all, come drink from out my cup,
the beverage that dulls the brain, and burns the spirits up;
that puts to shame your conquerors that slay their scores
below for this have deluged millions with the lava
tide of woe. Tho in the path of battle darkest
streams of blood may roll, yet while I killed the
body, I have damned the very soul. The
cholera, the plague, the sword such ruin
never wrought, as I in mirth or
malice on the innocent have
brought. And still I breathe
upon them, and they shrink before
my wrath, while year by year, my
thousands go my dusty way of death.

Quintain 5 lines with a syllabic progression of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 2, 4, 6, 8, 2

First Trip to the Beach
She's lost
inside her laugh
before the rising tide
that reaches out to tickle her
bare toes.

Spring trees
Reborn anew
Gnarled brown limbs freshly green
Blossoms gaily wave their colors
To welcome singing birds swinging home.

November Night
Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

Little Willy
Tobacco
Tobacco is a filthy weed.
I like it.
It satisfies like no normal need.
I like it.
It makes you thin, it makes you lean,
It takes the hair right off your bean;
Its the worst damn stuff Ive ever seen,
I like it.
Pillow Fight
A pillow was jammed in my face,
Its joyful.
A rip in my nightgown of lace!
Its joyful.
There are people all around me,
Waiting to hear my cry and plea
That I give up: they surrounded me!
Its joyful.

ta TUM-ta ta ta TUM-ta ta
ta TUM-ta
ta TUM-ta ta ta TUM-ta ta
ta TUM-ta
ta TUM-ta ta ta TUM-ta ta
ta TUM-ta ta ta TUM-ta ta
ta ta TUM-ta ta ta TUM-ta ta
ta TUM-ta

School
If school is going wrong.
Forget it!
Sorrow never lingers long,
Forget it!
If your teacher bears you ill will,
And you find you cant keep still,
When she says, Come after school,
Dont look mad, but just keep cool,
Forget it!

Limerick a five-lined rhymed (A-A-B-B-A) and metered (8-8-5-5-8) nonsense

poem; may be a tongue twister or a pun. Limericks often contain hyperbole,
onomatopoeia, idioms, puns, and other figurative devices. The last line of a
good limerick contains the PUNCH LINE or heart of the joke. The rhyme
should be catchy and flow together. They are easy to write if you remember
five steps to create the couplet and triplet:
Line 1 State the situation . . .
Line 2 What happened . . .
Line 3 What went wrong . . .
Line 4 What else went wrong . . .
Line 5 So what!?
A tutor who tooted the flute
Tried to teach two young tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tutor.
Is it harder to toot, or
To tutor two tooters to toot?

The cat with the Cheshire grin

Doesnt know that she just cant win.
She wants that little bird
She says without a word
But the bird is outside and shes in!

There was a young lady from Tucson

Who could not put her new shoes on
She pulled and she pushed
Until she was bushed
But still her new shoes wouldnt loo-son.
There once was an African gnu
Who found himself sick in a zoo
Said the keeper, Dont brood
Or rattle your mood.
And soon youll be rid of the flu.
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were caught, so what could they do?
Said the fly, Let us flee.
Let us fly, said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
There once was an artist named Hutty
Whom the neighbors all said was quite nutty.
He modeled, they say
In real sculptors clay.
But really he used silly putty.

There was a new teacher from ______________________

Who _____________________________________________
The principal came in
And said _________________________________________
Then ____________________________________________.

Part of Speech Poem 5 lines: article/noun; adjective/conjunction/adjective;

verb/conjunction/verb; adverb; article/noun
A dad,
strict but patient,
Disciplines and loves
unconditionally
The children.

A mother,
strict but funny,
Loves and serves
faithfully
A mom.

The class,
big but quiet,
Searching and experimenting
happily
The children.

The wrinkle
ancient, yet green
Carves and defines
immediately,
A face.

Blank Verse iambic pentameter, any number of lines, keeping the feel of
natural language; Definition: Iambic pentameter is a meter in poetry. It has an
unrhymed line with 5 iambs or feet. Iambic means the stress is on the second
syllable, an example is the word good-bye. Pentameter shows us that a line has 5
feet or clusters of two syllables adding up to 10 syllables a line. These feet are
marked like this Hello/hello/hello/hello/hello. Shakespeare and Marlowe are
famous for writing iambic pentameter.
I want to tell you evrything I know
About how blank verse ought to be composed.
Open your window and look outside. See
The people passing by, the shiny cars
As they zoom along the streets, honking horns.

Quinzaine 3 lines, 15 syllables (7, 5, 3), statement and question

Aroma of bread baking
Will it make you fat
To eat it?

True love is wonderful

Life holds new adventures

Can anyone find it?

Will I fear it

Does it exist?

or will I grab it?

Prepositional Poem each line begins with a preposition*

VOLLEYBALL
Over the net,
About the ball,
Around the court,
In the gym,
With a team,
Among the crowd,
Concerning the ref,
From one side to the other,
Past my arms,
Against the other team.

Under the sky

Beneath the willow tree
Instead of watching TV we watched the sunset.
Among us were the children of Mother Nature.
Above us is she.
Despite the heavy clouds she still watches
Over us.

*List of commonly used prepositions:

above

at

by

into

toward

about

past

before

down

like

through

across

behind

over

during

near

under

after

below

except

outside

of

until

against

beneath

for

off

instead of

up

along

beside

from

on

upon

throughout

among

between

in/out

since

with

around

in spite of

beyond

inside

to

within

till

underneath

onto

Free Verse may be rhymed or unrhymed and has less predictable rhythm; it still
uses well-chosen words that are considered poetic; Walt Whitman is often
considered the greatest American writer of free verse. Abraham Lincolns
Gettysburg Address is considered free verse.
But in a larger sense.
we cannot dedicatewe cannot consecratewe cannot hallow this ground.

The brave men, living and dead,

who struggled here,
have consecrated it
far above our poor power
to add or detract.

The world will little note,

nor long remember
what we say here;
but it can never forget
what they did here.

Activity: Ogden Nash is an American poet (1902-1971) who was best known for
writing pithy lighthearted verse. Display Ogden Nashs insect and animal poetry.

Identify mood. Provide poetry by Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn

Brooks, William Carlos Williams, et al. As a class, read and analyze poetry and
techniques to identify theme, mood, and form for each poem.
Intro poetry book project.