What Are Different Types of Poems?

Poems are collections of words that express an idea or emotion that often use imagery and metaphor. As you are
studying literature, you will likely notice that poems come in many, many different forms. As you read and perhaps
write your own poems, it is helpful to know the different kinds of poems.

Types of Poems
There are many different types of poems. The difference between each type is based on the format, rhyme
scheme and subject matter.

 Allegory (Time, Real and Imaginary by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

 Ballad (As You Came from the Holy Land by Sir Walter Raleigh)
 Blank verse (The Princess by Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
 Burlesque (Hudibras by Samuel Butler)
 Cacophony (The Bridge by Hart Crane)
 Canzone (A Lady Asks Me by Guido Cavalcanti)
 Conceit (The Flea by John Donne)
 Dactyl (The Lost Leader by Robert Browning)
 Elegy (Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard by Thomas Gray)
 Epic (The Odyssey by Homer)
 Epitaph (An Epitaph by Walter de la Mare)
 Free verse (The Waste-Land by TS Eliot)
 Haiku (How Many Gallons by Issa)
 Imagery (In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound)
 Limerick (There Was a Young Lady of Dorking by Edward Lear)
 Lyric (When I Have Fears by John Keats)
 Name (Nicky by Marie Hughes)
 Narrative (The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe)
 Ode (Ode to a Nightingale by Percy Bysshe Shelley)
 Pastoral (To a Mouse by Robert Burns)
 Petrarchan sonnet (London, 1802 by William Wordsworth)
 Quatrain (The Tyger by William Blake)
 Refrain (Troy Town by Dante Rosetti)
 Senryu (Hide and Seek by Shuji Terayama)
 Shakespearean sonnet (Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare)
 Sonnet (Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats)
 Tanka (A Photo by Alexis Rotella)
 Terza rima (Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost)
About Some of the Types of Poems

Haiku
Many people have heard about haiku. In fact, most of us are instructed at one point or another-usually in
elementary school or high school-to write one of our very own. Even if you did that, do you remember what this
type of poem actually is?
Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry which is composed of three non rhyming lines. The first and third lines have five
syllables each and the second line has seven syllables. They often express feelings and thoughts about nature;
however, you could write a poem about any subject that you would like to in this form. Perhaps the most famous
Haiku is Basho's Old Pond:

Furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

Translated, this poem reads:

The old pond--
a frog jumps in,
sound of water.

Pastoral
One of the poetic favorites is pastoral poetry because it elicits such wonderful senses of peace and harmony.
Examples of this form include Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn, which is also a type of ode. A stanza of this poem reads:
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Like the haiku, nature is often at the center of these types of poems as well. In general, pastoral poetry will focus
on describing a rural place, but the terms will be peaceful and endearing. You will feel at ease after reading these
types of poems.
Many pastoral poems are written about shepherds. They are written as a series of rhyming couplets.

Terza Rima
You might be able to get some sort of sense of what this poetry encompasses just by looking at the name of it. The
lines in these types of poems are arranged in what are called "tercets." What this means is the lines come in
groups of threes.
That does not mean that the poem is only three lines long. There can be multiple groups of three lines. Like the
haiku, there are certain syllable requirements, as most poems written in terza rima have lines of 10 or 11 syllables.
The Italian poet Dante created this form, and his Divine Comedy is one of the best-known examples of the form. A
stanza of this poem reads:
His glory, by whose might all things are mov'd,
Pierces the universe, and in one part
Sheds more resplendence, elsewhere less. In heav'n,
That largeliest of his light partakes, was I,
Witness of things, which to relate again
Surpasseth power of him who comes from thence;
For that, so near approaching its desire
Our intellect is to such depth absorb'd,
That memory cannot follow. Nathless all,
That in my thoughts I of that sacred realm
Could store, shall now be matter of my song.

Ballad
Are you familiar with the term "ballad"? You probably are, because people sometimes refer to songs-particularly
romantic ones-as ballads. In fact, ballad poems are frequently sung-or at least they are intended to be sung-and
they are often about love.
Often, these ballads will tell stories and they tend to be of a mystical nature. As a song does, ballads tend to have a
refrain that repeats at various intervals throughout.
Guido Cavalcanti's Ballad and Sir Walter Raleigh's As You Came from the Holy Land both demonstrate the musical
quality of the ballad. An excerpt from Raleigh's poem can be seen here:
As you came from the holy land
Of Walsinghame,
Met you not with my true love
By the way as you came ?

How shall I know your true love,

That have met many one,
As I went to the holy land,
That have come, that have gone?

Imagery
We decided to place a focus on imagery poems because of the immense power that they possess. Many, many
poems can be classified as imagery poems; however, some are better at the task than others.
Individuals who often write imagery-based poems are known as Imagists. William Carlos Williams' short poem The
Red Wheelbarrow is a famous example of a short imagist poem:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
These types of poems work to draw a picture in the mind of the reader, in order to give an extremely powerful
image of what the writer is talking about. They work to intensify the senses of the reader.

Limerick
A limerick is a poem that is often silly or whimsical, written in five lines with an AABBA rhyme scheme. Often,
limericks tell a short, humorous story.
These types of poems have been popular for hundreds of years, particularly in the English language. When
limericks first became popular, they often expressed ideas that were crude and off-color but today, limericks
express all sorts of ideas.
The form of the limerick was made popular by a British poet named Edward Lear in the 1800s, whose limericks
often started off: There once was or There was
Some of his limericks include There was an Old Man with a Nose and There was a Young Lady of Dorking, which
goes like this:
There was a Young Lady of Dorking,
Who bought a large bonnet for walking;
But its colour and size,
So bedazzled her eyes,
That she very soon went back to Dorking.

Epic Poem
One of the longest types of poems is known as the epic poem, which has been around for thousands of years.
Technically a type of narrative poem, which tells a story, epic poems usually tell the story of a mythical warrior and
the great things that he accomplished in all of his journeys such as The Odyssey and The Iliad.
Epic poetry began as folk stories that were passed down from generation to generation, which were then later
written into long form.
One of the oldest epic poems is actually one of the oldest pieces of written literature in the world. It is called
the Epic of Gilgameshand dates back to 1800 BC. The start of this epic (with the translater's (?) notes) reads:
He who has seen everything, I will make known (?) to the lands.
I will teach (?) about him who experienced all things,
... alike,
Anu granted him the totality of knowledge of all.
He saw the Secret, discovered the Hidden,
he brought information of (the time) before the Flood.
He went on a distant journey, pushing himself to exhaustion,
but then was brought to peace.
He carved on a stone stela all of his toils,
and built the wall of Uruk-Haven,
the wall of the sacred Eanna Temple, the holy sanctuary.

Elegy
Because poems can express a wide variety of emotions, there are sad forms of poetry as well as happy ones. One
of these sad forms is known as an elegy.
Elegies express a lament, often over the death of a loved one. This makes elegies especially popular for funerals.
Some elegies are written not only to be read out loud; they can be put to music and sung.
Tennyson's In Memoriam is an elegy to a close friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, and was written over twenty years:
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;

Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Free Verse
While it is easy to think that poems have to rhyme, free verse is a type of poetry that does not require any rhyme
scheme or meter. Poems written in free verse, however, do tend to employ other types of creative language such
as alliteration, words that begin with the same sound, or assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds.
Some people find free verse to be a less restrictive type of poetry to write since it doesn't have to employ the form
or the rhyming schemes of other types of poetry.
The free verse form of poetry became popular in the 1800s, and continues to be popular among poets even to this
day. TS Eliot was one of the masters of the form, as best seen in his poems The Waste Land and The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock, which begins:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming questionÉ.
Oh, do not ask, ÒWhat is it?Ó
Let us go and make our visit.

Sonnet
One of the most famous types of poetry, the sonnet, has been popular with authors from Dante to Shakespeare.
A sonnet contains 14 lines, typically with two rhyming stanzas known as a rhyming couplet at the end.
There are several types of sonnets, including:

 Italian (also known as Petrarchan)

 Spenserian
 English or Shakespearean sonnet
Shakespeare, famous for writing more than 150 sonnets (including his popular Sonnet 138) is credited with
creating for a form of the sonnet that enjoyed widespread popularity throughout England for hundreds of
years. Sonnet 138 reads:
When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.
Reading and understanding these types of poems should help you to better analyze poetry that you come across
and may even inspire you to write your own creative works.

Poetry Forms - Definitions and Examples

Sonnet - a short rhyming poem with 14 lines. The original sonnet form was invented in the 13/14th century by
Dante and an Italian philosopher named Francisco Petrarch. The form remained largely unknown until it was found
and developed by writers such as Shakespeare. Sonnets use iambic meter in each line and use line-ending rhymes.

For more about Sonnets, read How To Write A Sonnet (here also on the FFP Poetry Forums)

Limerick - a five-line witty poem with a distinctive rhythm. The first, second and fifth lines, the longer lines, rhyme.
The third and fourth shorter lines rhyme. (A-A-B-B-A).

For more about Limericks, read How To Write A Limerick on the FFP Poetry Forums

Haiku - This ancient form of poem writing is renowned for its small size as well as the precise punctuation and
syllables needed on its three lines. It is of ancient Asian origin.

Haiku's are composed of 3 lines, each a phrase. The first line typically has 5 syllables, second line has 7 and the 3rd
and last line repeats another 5. In addition there is a seasonal reference included.

For more about Haiku's, read How To Write A Haiku

Narrative - A narrative poem tells the story of an event in the form of a poem. There is a strong sense of narration,
characters, and plot. See Narrative Poem Examples

Epic - a lengthy narrative poem in grand language celebrating the adventures and accomplishments of a legendary
or conventional hero

Couplet - two lines of verse which rhyme and form a unit alone or as part of a poem

Free Verse - A Free Verse Poem does not follow any rules. Their creation is completely in the hands of the author.
Rhyming, syllable count, punctuation, number of lines, number of stanzas, and line formation can be done
however the author wants in order to convey the idea. There is no right or wrong way to create a Free Verse
poem. See Free Verse Poem Examples

SONNET

When you think about poetic forms, the sonnet might be the first one to come to mind. It’s an old, old form that

originated in Italy in the 13th century. There are two common forms, both of which have lots of rules, should you

want to follow the rules: the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean (or Elizabethan). Sonnets traditionally

have 14 lines and are often about love—lost love, married love, forgotten love, the longing for love, etc, etc.

Petrarchan sonnets typically have an ABBA ABBA CDE CDE rhyme scheme, and Shakespearean sonnets are usually

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. They are written in iambic pentameter.

But always remember that rules are made to be broken! You are welcome to consider these guidelines mere

suggestions if you like.

William Shakespeare, “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds.” For a super-traditional Shakespearean sonnet,

of course we are going to look to the master!

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why.” Millay messes with the rhyme

scheme a bit here, but otherwise, this is a great example of a Petrarchan sonnet:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

HAIKU

Because haiku are very short poems, they make common school assignments and writing exercises, so you may

have written one of these before. The haiku is a Japanese form that arose in the 17th century, most famously in

the writing of Matsuo Bashō.

Typically a haiku has 17 syllables, arranged in three lines, first five syllables, then 7, then 5. Haiku are most

commonly about nature, often containing a seasonal reference. They tend to contain two juxtaposed images or

ideas.

Matsuo Bashō, “By the Old Temple”:

By the old temple,

peach blossoms;

a man treading rice.

Matsuo Bashō, “An Old Silent Pond”:

An old silent pond…

A frog jumps into the pond,

splash! Silence again.

Natsume Soseki, “The Lamp Once Out”:

The lamp once out

Cool stars enter

The window frame.

More haiku are available here.

VILLANELLE

The villanelle, like the sonnet, is an old form with lots of rules. The good thing about writing a villanelle is that

there’s a lot of repetition, so once you have some of the lines chosen, you get to use them again and again. But

making meaning out of that much repetition is challenging.

Here are the details: villanelles are 19 lines, organized into five stanzas of three lines each, and one closing stanza

of four lines. The rhyme scheme is ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA. Notice there are only two rhyming sounds

here! In addition, line 1 gets repeated in lines 6, 12, and 18. Line 3 gets repeated in lines 9, 15, and 19. So many

rules!

Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” This is probably the most famous villanelle. It follows the

rules of the form perfectly.

Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art.” This one does not follow the rules perfectly, although it’s pretty close. When it breaks

the rules, it does so with a purpose. This one is my favorite:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

SESTINA

Here’s another old poetic form, in this case coming out of 12th-century Provence. Like the villanelle, it has a lot of

repetition, but unlike the villanelle, sestinas don’t have to rhyme. The sestina has six stanzas of six lines each, and a

closing stanza of three lines. The six words that end the lines of the first stanza get repeated at the line endings of

each of the remaining stanzas, and all six words appear in the poem’s final three lines. Here is a great description

of the order these six words should appear in.

Elizabeth Bishop, “Sestina.”

Alberto Alvaro Rios, “Nani“:

Sitting at her table, she serves

the sopa de arroz to me

instinctively, and I watch her,

the absolute mamá, and eat words

I might have had to say more

out of embarrassment. To speak,

now-foreign words I used to speak,

too, dribble down her mouth as she serves

me albóndigas. No more

than a third are easy to me.

By the stove she does something with words

and looks at me only with her

back. I am full. I tell her

I taste the mint, and watch her speak

smiles at the stove. All my words

make her smile. Nani never serves

herself, she only watches me

with her skin, her hair. I ask for more.

I watch the mamá warming more

tortillas for me. I watch her

fingers in the flame for me.

Near her mouth, I see a wrinkle speak

of a man whose body serves

the ants like she serves me, then more words

from more wrinkles about children, words

about this and that, flowing more

easily from these other mouths. Each serves

as a tremendous string around her,

holding her together. They speak

Nani was this and that to me

and I wonder just how much of me

will die with her, what were the words

I could have been, was. Her insides speak

through a hundred wrinkles, now, more

than she can bear, steel around her,

shouting, then, What is this thing she serves?

She asks me if I want more.

I own no words to stop her.

Even before I speak, she serves.

ACROSTIC

Here is a fun form: spell out a name, word, or phrase with the first letter of each line of your poem. You can write a

love poem using the name of your beloved this way!

Edgar Allan Poe, “An Acrostic.”

Sathya Narayana, “Nuggets“:

Nuggets of gold, money and authority

Ultimate luxury, status and handy men

Gathered he through all bloody means

Giving not a damn to humane feelings

Equipoise is but nature’s patent strategy

Tamed is he by crippling ailments

So sad! Spends life like a frozen vegetable!

EKPHRASTIC POETRY
This type of poem doesn’t have particular rules for form: unlike the forms above, you can write it however you like.

What it is, instead, is a poem about a work of art: a painting, a statue, perhaps a photograph. It’s art about art,

written in response to visual art that inspires the poet.

Tyehimba Jess, “Hagar in the Wilderness.”

Rebecca Wolff, “Ekphrastic.”

CONCRETE POETRY

Concrete poetry, or shape poetry, or visual poetry, is meant to look a particular way on the page: it’s written to

form a particular image or shape that enhances the poem’s meaning. In its cheesy form, a concrete poem might be

a love poem written in the shape of a heart. But here are some better examples:

May Swenson, “Women.” This poem is about how women are expected be “pedestals moving to the motions of

men,” and the poem itself illustrates the swaying women are supposed to do at the will of men.

George Herbert, “Altar.”

ELEGY

Like ekphrastic poetry above, this type of poem doesn’t have to fit a particular form; instead, it’s defined by its

subject, which is death. An elegy is a poem of mourning, often for a particular person, but it can be about a group

of people or about a broader sense of loss. Elegies often move from mourning toward consolation.

Walt Whitman, “O Captain, My Captain.”

Mary Jo Bangs, “You Were You Are Elegy.”

Kwame Dawes, “Requiem.” The poem begins this way:

I sing requiem

for the dead, caught in that

mercantilistic madness.

We have not built lasting

monuments of severe stone

facing the sea, the watery tomb,

so I call these songs

shrines of remembrance

where faithful descendants

may stand and watch the smoke

curl into the sky

in memory of those
devoured by the cold Atlantic.

In every blues I hear

riding the dank swamp

I see the bones

picked clean in the belly

of the implacable sea.

EPIGRAM

Want to write something short? Try your hand at an epigram. All you have to do is be brilliant and witty in a few

lines—easy! Epigrams don’t have to be poems, but they often are. They are short and witty, often satirical, and

have a surprising and funny ending.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Epigram“:

Sir, I admit your general rule,

That every poet is a fool,

But you yourself may serve to show it,

That every fool is not a poet.

Emily Dickinson, “‘Faith’ is a Fine Invention“:

“Faith” is a fine invention

For Gentlemen who see!

But Microscopes are prudent

In an Emergency!

LIMERICK

On the subject of funny poems, next is the limerick. You’re probably familiar with the limerick form, even if you

don’t get the details of it, because its sound is so distinctive: two longer lines, two short ones, and a closing longer

line that makes a joke, often a ribald one. If you want the technical details, here you go: limericks have a rhyme

scheme of AABBA and use anapestic meter, with three feet in the longer lines and two in the shorter.

Dixon Lanier Merritt:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His bill can hold more than his beli-can.

He can take in his beak

Food enough for a week

But I’m damned if I see how the heli-can.

Anonymous:
There was a young girl from St. Paul,

Wore a newspaper-dress to a ball.

The dress caught on fire

And burned her entire

Front page, sporting section and all.

BALLAD

If you want to read a story or tell a story in a poem, the ballad is for you. 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, groups of four lines, and have a rhyme scheme of ABAB or ABCB. The lines alternate

between having eight syllables and six syllables. But the ballad is a loose enough form that you can make of it

whatever you want.

Anonymous, “Barbara Allen.” Here’s the first stanza:

In Scarlet town, where I was born,

There was a fair maid dwellin’,

Made every youth cry Well-a-way!

Her name was Barbara Allen.

Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee.”

EPITAPH

The epitaph is like the elegy, only shorter. It’s the kind of poem that might appear on a gravestone, although it

doesn’t have to. It’s brief and it pays tribute to a person who has passed away or commemorates some other loss.

Robert Herrick, “Upon a Child That Died“:

Here she lies, a pretty bud,

Lately made of flesh and blood,

Who as soon fell fast asleep

As her little eyes did peep.

Give her strewings, but not stir

The earth that lightly covers her.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Epitaph“:

Heap not on this mound

Roses that she loved so well:

Why bewilder her with roses,

That she cannot see or smell?

She is happy where she lies

With the dust upon her eyes.

TANKA

The tanka (which means “short poem”) is a Japanese form that is five lines. The first and third lines have five

syllables (in the English version of the form) and the other lines have seven syllables each. The subject of the poem

can be nature, as it generally is for haiku, but this isn’t required.

Sadakichi Hartmann, “Tanka“:

Winter? Spring? Who knows?

White buds from the plumtrees wing

And mingle with the snows.

No blue skies these flowers bring,

Yet their fragrance augurs Spring.

Philip Appleman, “Three Haiku, Two Tanka.”

ODE

An ode is simply a poem address to a particular person, event, or thing. It’s often meant to praise or glorify its

subject. The ode as a form comes from ancient Greece and there are various ode types available, but basically if

you are addressing something/someone directly, you are writing an ode.

Pablo Neruda, “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market.” Here is how the poem begins:

Here,

among the market vegetables,

this torpedo

from the ocean

depths,

a missile

that swam,

now

lying in front of me

dead.

Phillis Wheatley, “Ode to Neptune.”

FREE VERSE

This is the form of poetry where you can do whatever you want! There are no rules! You don’t use regular patterns

of rhythm or rhyme, don’t need lines of any particular length, or stanzas of a particular number of lines. This is
both liberating and terrifying. Yes, you can do whatever you want…which means it can be hard to know where to

start. But give it a try and enjoy the freedom of it!

Nikki Giovanni, “Winter Poem“:

once a snowflake fell

on my brow and i loved

it so much and i kissed

it and it was happy and called its cousins

and brothers and a web

of snow engulfed me then

i reached to love them all

and i squeezed them and they became

a spring rain and i stood perfectly

still and was a flower