Today, we're going to talk about form. Form is a set of rules that a poem follows. Now an author can choose to pick a set of rules, and say “all right when this poem comes out, it's going to follow these rules.” For example, it may have a certain rhyme scheme. Remember, “rhyme scheme” is the pattern of end rhymes in a poem. It may have so many lines--it may require me to group those lines up in specified numbers of lines--and you have a specified number of those--and those lines are in stanzas. Of course, specified number of stanzas. There's tons of forms, so you probably know the sonnet, you may know the haiku, you might know the villanelle, but sonnet and haiku are the ones that are the most popular, or the most well-known for us here. But, we can go from very formal poems (which where they have rules and the poem follows those rules to a "T")-- the rhymes are exactly where they're supposed to be in this set of rules --the lines are grouped up like they're supposed to be. They may even have follow the rule (where) the form has a rule about topics. It may be about love because to have this form of poem, it's got to be about love--that's highly formal--it follows all the rules. Then we can go to the other side--which we would call “free verse.” Free verse sounds like it doesn't have rules, and you're right in that respect, because there may not be any written rules anywhere, and it looks like it's free, and just whatever comes out comes out, and it goes wherever it needs to go and that (I’m going to say that's possible) but most likely free verse is poetry where (upstairs) the writer has rules in their head, and they're following those rules when they write the poem--now those rules might be subconscious, but the writer is following them. They think this word goes in this place and nowhere else, and not any other type of word. And, so while they may obviously--or they may be (apparently to the reader) maybe without rules, they do have rules even though they may be subconscious when the writer is writing them. OK, so that's like a really broad, loose form of formal writing. So, remember form is the set of rules that a poem follows. Have a good day!