Poetry can be intimidating. It's easy to feel that it's too difficult to read and too scary to write. You might have been told that you misunderstood the poems you studied in English class or that the poem you wrote in which you poured out your heart was full of cliches. If so, that's a shame because the world of poetry is vast and varied.
And I believe it all my heart that there are poems out there you will love and types of poems you will enjoy writing. You might just need a quick introduction to various poetic forms to get you going. In this video, we'll talk about the most common types of poetry, their main characteristics, and famous examples of each. You may prefer to read certain types of poems while for other types you may enjoy writing your own. Familiarize yourself with these different styles and see if any spark your imagination.
Alright, so the first in our list are found poems. Found poems are created through the careful selection and organization of words and phrases from existing texts. These take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. Found poetry is the literary equivalent version of collage.
Much like the visual artist, it combines multiple media like newspapers, headers, poems, sheet music. into a collage art you can do the same with words pulling concepts and phrasings from various sources to create count poems these are usually made from newspaper articles street signs graffiti speeches letters or even other poems canada is a type of filipino poem which consists of four lines with seven syllables each with the same rhyme at the end of each line it has seven seven seven seven syllabic verse with commonly an AAVB rhyme scheme. So again, it's a poem which is composed of four lines and each line has seven syllables.
So take a look at this example. Oh be resilient, you stay, Should the waters be coming, I shall cower as the moss, To you I shall be clinging. So if you're going to count the syllables per line, you will have seven.
For example, Oh be resilient, you stay. Okay, so each line should have seven syllables. It's the same with the second isako in Filipino.
In umit na silapi, walang makapagsabi. Kahit napipingsaksi, naitago na kasi. Like the Japanese haiku, Tanagas traditionally do not have any titles. They are poetic forms that should speak for themselves. Most are handed down by oral history and contain proverbial forms, moral lessons, and snippets of Ikotopefe's.
A poetic form similar to the Ambahan is the Tanaga. Unlike the Ambahan whose leg is indefinite, the Tanaga is a compact seven-syllable quatrain. Poets test their skills with rhyme, meter, and metaphor to the Tanaga because not only is it rhymed and measured, but also exact skillful use of words to create a puzzle that demands some kind of an answer. Next, we have the Yona. The Yona is an ancient form of poetry that is composed of seven syllables for every verse line, three verses or lines for every stanza and has a single rhyme scale.
In the Sinopoian, the lion is accepted as a lion with seven legs and three tails. It is one lion but there are other lions that are not the same as Sinopoian. And the theme is separate. For example, if the dog is looking for a grandpa, don't be sad.
Now, I will read the poem. I am your friend. So again, every stanza should have three lines and every line should have seven syllables.
That's the one. Haiku! You might remember writing a few of these back in grade school because not only are these poems short, but they can be very fun to write. Haiku is a Japanese poem written in three lines following the five, seven, five syllables.
Often focusing on images from nature, Haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression. Although they usually refer to nature, the only real rule applies to the number of syllables. So again, it's 5-7-5.
Line 1 should have 5 syllables, line 2 should have 7, and line 3 should have 5 syllables. But regardless, you can let your imagination run wild with this. So for example, I call to my love on morning's ride with someone, the songbirds answer.
We also have an acrostic poem. An acrostic poem is a poem where the first letters of each line Spell out a word or phrase vertically that asks the theme or message of the poem. Sometimes, a word or phrase can also be found down the middle or end of the poem, but the most common is at the beginning.
A lot of people use these poems to describe people or holidays, and lines can be made up of single words or phrases. Acrostic poems do not follow a specific rhyme scheme, so they are easier to write. So here is an example of an acrostic poem.
A sonnet is a poem that has 14 lines and follows specific rhyme scheme. It comes from the Italian word that means little song. There are various types of sonnets and each one is formatted a little differently following various rhyme schemes.
If you remember during your grade 9, there is a lesson about sonnets. So there are three main types of sonnets, which are the Italian or the Bertrachan sonnet, the English or Shakespearean sonnet, and the Spenserian sonnet. They are named after the poets who made them famous.
These forms have been around since the 16th century. Usually, the poem is written in three quadrants and ends with a couplet. So you can see here an example of a sonnet written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning entitled, How Do I Love You?
Next, we have concrete poem. Concrete poem is a poem that uses words to form the shape of the subject of the poem. That is why we also call it shape poem.
Here we go. Concrete poetry is designed to take a particular shape or form on the page. Poets can manipulate spacing or layout to emphasize a theme or important element in the text, or sometimes they can take the literal shape of their subject.
Lyric poem is a short poem that is usually written in the first-person point of view and expresses an emotion or an idea or describes a scene. It does not tell a story and are often musical. Most poems, especially modern ones, are lyric poems. Here are some types of lyric poetry.
An odd is a short lyric poem that phrases an individual, an idea, or an event. In ancient Greece, odds were originally accompanied by music. In fact, the word odd comes from the Greek word that means to sing or to chant. Odds are often ceremonial and formal in tone. There are several different types of odds, but they are highly structured and adhere to poetic forms.
The example that we have here is an ode to the confederate dead by Alan Tate. So this ode has a classical odd structure and speaks to honor those who died for the South in the Civil War. An elegy is written with a purpose to mourn the dead. It usually begins by reminiscing about the dead person, then weaves for the reason of death, and then resolves the grief by concluding that death leads to immortality. It has no stanza or magical pattern.
It often uses apostrophe as a literary technique. So one famous example of an elegy is Walt Whitman's Oh Captain, My Captain, which Whitman wrote following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Now a narrative poem is a form of poetry that tells a story, often making the voices of a narrator and characters as well. The entire story is usually written in metered verse, and narrative poems do not need rhyme.
So here are some examples of narrative poems. First is ballad. If you want to read a story or tell a story in a poem, then ballad is for you.
It is a narrative poem that has a musical rhythm and can be sung. It's an old traditional form that used to be passed down orally from one generation to the next. Ballads, if you want to follow the rules of the form strictly, are written in quatrains, that means groups of four lines, and have rhyme scheme of ABAB or ABCB.
The lines alternate between having 8 syllables and 6 syllables, but the ballad is a loose enough form that you can make of it whatever you want. So the example that we have here is a ballad from Edward Allan Poe entitled Annabelle. Another type of a narrative poem is epic. Epic is a long narrative poem in elevated style recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical hero.
Examples of epic include Iliad by Homer, Beowulf, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Metamorphoses by Ovid, and the last one is a limerick. You're probably familiar with the limerick form, even if you don't get the details of it, because it sounds so distinctive. Two longer lines, two shorter lines, and a closing longer line that makes a joke, often a ribald one.
If you want the technical details, then here you go. A limerick is a very structured poem, so it's usually humorous and compulsive. five lines in an AABBA rhyming pattern.
The beat must be anapestic meaning it's weak-weak-strong with three feet in lines one, two, and five and two feet in lines three and four. It is usually a narrative poem based upon a short and often ribald anecdote. Which of the following poetic forms do you usually encounter? How do you appreciate these forms? This is a fairly lengthy list but it's only just the beginning when it comes to understanding and appreciating different types of poems.
There are other types of poetry which were not discussed in this video. So if you happen to know other forms of poetry, feel free to share it with us. Thank you so much for watching.