GENRES OF POETRY

A. Narrative Poetry

B. Lyric Poetry

C. Dramatic Poetry

A. Narrative Poetry

It is a form of poem that tells a series of events using poetic devices such as rhythm, rhyme, compact
language, and attention to sound. In other words narrative poem tells a story, but it does it with poetic
flair. Character, setting, conflict, and plot are some elements of narrative poetry that are important.

Examples of Narrative poems include:

1. Epic

2. Metrical Romance

3. Metrical Tale

4. Ballad

1. Epic

An epic is a song unified narrative poem, recounting in dignified language the adventures of a warrior, a
king or a god, the whole embodying the religious and philosophical beliefs, the moral code, customs,
traditions, manners, attitudes, sciences, folklore and culture of the people or country from which it
came. Characteristics of the classical epic include these:

a. The main character or a protagonist is heroically larger than life, often the source and subject of
legend or a national hero.

b. The deeds of the hero are presented without favoritism, revealing his failings as well as his virtues.

c. The action, often in battle, reveals the more-than-human-strength of the heroes as they engage in
acts of heroism and courage.

d. The setting covers several nations, the whole world, or even the universe.

e. The episodes, even though they may be fictional, provide an explanation for some of the
circumstances or events in the history of a nation or people.

f. The gods and lesser divinities play an active role in the outcome of actions.

g. All of the various adventures form an organic whole, where each event relates in some way to the
central theme.
Sample of Famous epic

1. Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer -about Trojan war and the adventures of Odysseus on his voyage
home after the war.

2. Virgil’s Aeneid

3. Milton’s Paradise Lost

2. Metrical Romance

Metrical Romance recounts the quest undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a lady’s favor. Its
central interest is courtly love, together with tournaments fought and dragons and monsters slain for
the damsel’s sake. It stresses the chivalric ideals of courage, loyalty, honor, mercifulness to an
opponent, and exquisite and manners; and it delights in wonders and marvels s.

3. Metrical Tale

A metrical tale is a simple, straightforward story in verse. It narrates strange happenings in a direct
manner, without detailed descriptions of character.

Example : Petronius’ The Widow of Ephesus

4. Ballad

A ballad is a narrative poem which is meant to be sung, usually composed in the ballad stanza. Although
some ballads (literary ballad) are carefully crafted poems written traditional ballad) is derived from the
oral traditions.

The anonymous medieval ballad, “Barbara Allan, ” exemplifies the genre. It tells a story similar to a folk
tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain. “ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor
Coleridge is an example of a ballad. All stanzas end with the same one-line refrain.

B. Lyric Poetry

Lyric is any fairly short poem, consisting of the utterance by a single speaker, who expresses state of
mind or a process of perception, thought and feeling.

It is generally considered the most intense genre of poetry, the form that honors its musical origins. The
term lyric comes from the Greek word for the lyre, a stringed instrument similar to a guitar and suitable
for the accompaniment of a solitary singer. The lyric poem is a private, often visionary act of intelligence
and emotion that becomes public through the music of language.

It is also a highly concentrated poem of direct personal emotion, most often written in the first person.

Lyric poetry is an artefact of language, capable of great beauty and excitement in its exploration of new
perceptions. Many lyric speakers are represented as musing in solitude.
Examples of Lyric poems include:

1. Ode

2. Elegy

3. Sonnet

4. Song

5. Simple Lyric

1. Ode

An ode is a dignified and elaborately structured lyric poem praising and glorifying an individual,
commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally. Odes originally
were songs performed to the accompaniment of a musical instrument.

2. Elegy

Elegy is a lyric poem written in an elegiac couplets, that expresses sorrow or lamentation, usually for one
who has died. This type of work stemmed out of a Greek word known as elegus, a song of mourning or
lamentation that is accompanied by the lyre.

A example of this type of poem is Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Robert
Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” is elegiac in tone. A more explicitly identified elegy is W.H. Auden’s
“In Memory of William Butler Yeats “ and his “Funeral Blues”.

3. Sonnet

A sonnet is a short poem with fourteen lines, usually written in iambic pentameter.

RHYMING PATTERNS FOR SONNETS

Italian or Petrarchan has two stanzas: the first of eight lines is called octave and has the rhyme-scheme
abba abba; the second of six lines is called the sestet and has the rhyme cdecde or cdcdcd

The Spenserian sonnet, developed by Edmund Spenser, has three quatrains and a heroic couplet, in
iambic pentameter with rhymes ababbcbccdcdee.

The English sonnet, developed by Shakespeare, has three quatrains and a heroic couplet, in iambic
pentameter with rhymes ababcdcdefefgg

4. Song

A song is a short lyric or narrative text set to music. The music often reproduces the mood of and lends a
heightened emotional expression to the song’s text, which is often a poem.

5. A simple lyric is a short poem expressing the poet’s thought, feeling or emotion. The anonymous “
Western Wind” epitomizes the genre:
Western wind, when will thou blow,

The small rain down can rain?

Christ, if my love were in my arms

And I in my bed again!

C. Dramatic Poetry

Dramatic Poetry

Dramatic poetry is any poetry that uses the discourse of the characters involved to tell a story or more
characters speaking, usually to other characters, but sometimes to themselves or directly to the reader.

Dramatic poetry is typically meant to be performed for an audience.

Examples of Dramatic poetry

1. Dramatic Monologue is a literary device that is used when a character reveals his or her innermost
thoughts and feelings, those that are hidden throughout the of course of the story line, through a poem
or a speech.

This speech, where only one character speaks, is recited while other characters are present onstage.
This monologue often comes during a climatic moment in a work and often reveals hidden truths about
a character, their history and their relationships. Also, it can further develop a character’s personality
and also be used to create irony.

2. Soliloquy

A Soliloquy is the act of speaking while alone, especially when used as a theatrical device that allows a
character’s thoughts and ideas to be conveyed to the audience.

In Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Juliet was thinking aloud about the traditional enmity
between Romeo’s clan and her family, expressing her hopelessness about the success of their love.

“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name;

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

Soliloquy, Monologue and Aside