Poetry Styles

Poetry cannot be defined. I mean, you cannot bind the essence of it into a few sentences. The definition of poetry changes from person to person and from time to time. One thing about poetry that will always remain constant is that poetry is an art. And so you cannot exactly tell anyone how to write a poem. Although, the different styles of poetry, the basic elements of poetry and the various techniques used in writing poems can be learned. Learning the composition of poetry is like learning to play a musical instrument. You learn all the rules and techniques of playing the instrument before you create or compose something on it. Poetry style is the way in which a poem is written but that is different from the 'type' of poem. There are many different types of poems and many are invented day in day out. Actually, you can easily fill a 300 page book with just the types of poems and the various poetry techniques. Here, I have tried to give you an overview of the different styles of poetry. Take a look.

Acrostic Style
Acrostic style of poetry is one in which the poet uses the letters in a single word to start each line of the poem.

Ballad Style
A ballad is simply a story told in the form of a poem. It is usually related to folk tales and is easy to sing. Example- the Hindu epic Ramayana is a ballad. Each verse of a ballad ends with the same line, which is called 'a refrain'.

Clerihew Style
It is a comical style of poetry and is named after its inventor Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The rhyme scheme used in this style of poetry is usually a-a-b-b.

Damante Style
A Damante styled poem commonly contains seven lines that are shaped like a diamond. The poem is written in the following format.
Line 1: Noun or subject
Line 2: Two Adjectives
Line 3: Three -ing words
Line 4: Four words about the subject
Line 5: Three -ing words
Line 6: Two adjectives
Line 7: Synonym/antonym for the subject

Epitaph Style
It is a small poem that is inscribed on tombstones telling something about or praising the person on whose grave the stone is placed.

Fable
A fable is a story written in verse or prose with a moral at the end. Generally, it uses animals as characters to teach a valuable lesson.

Free Verse
This is a free form of poetry that most modern poets are following. It does not follow the conventional elements of poetry like meters, rhymes etc. Its emphasis is on the thought behind the poem.

Ghazal
A Ghazal is a style of poetry that is written like an odd numbered chain of couplets where every couplet is an individual poem.

Haiku
Haiku is a Japanese style of poetry. It generally contains three unrhymed verses.

Lanturne
The Lanturne is a poem of five-line stanza that is shaped like a Japanese lantern with a definite syllabic pattern.

Limerick Style
This style of poetry is witty and sometimes vulgar. The limerick format poem has around five lines in a verse. The first, second and fifth line have the same metrical structure and they also rhyme with each other. Here are some limerick examples, to understand the style better.

Minute Poetry
The Minute Poem consists of rhyming verses that have exactly 12 lines of 60 syllables written in strict
iambic meter.

Monody
In this style of poem the poet mourns the death of someone. It is sung by a single singer without a chorus.

Monorhyme
This kind of poems end in the same rhyme. It is very commonly in Welsh, in medieval Latin, and in Arabic.

Nonet
A nonet poem has precisely nine lines. The first line has nine syllables, the second line eight syllables, the third line seven syllables and so on.

An Ode
An ode is a poem that is written to praise some person or a remarkable event.

Palindrome
This type of poem reads the same forward and backward. It is taken from the Greek word palindromos: palin which means again.

Pantoum Poetry
The pantoum style of poetry uses four line stanzas, where you repeat lines. Lines 2 and 4 of a stanza becomes lines 1 and 3 of the next. It is a rhythmic style of poetry.

Quatrain Poetry
The name quatrain has been derived from Latin and French words that mean- four. The quatrain style of poetry means writing a poem of four lines. It is a very well-known style of poetry.

Shape Poetry
Also known as concrete poetry, shape poetry are poems whose shape refers to their subject. It is an old form of poetry and its earliest forms come from some Greek poets.

Sonnet Style Poetry
A sonnet is a lyrical poem consisting of fourteen lines. There are two types of sonnets Petrarchan sonnet and Shakespearean sonnet. And both are very popular.

Tongue Twisters
Tongue twisters are poems that are styled as tongue twisters make use of words and combination of words that are hard to pronounce individually or collectively. Usually such poems use a lot of alliteration and these examples of alliteration will help you understand this style better.

Villanelle Poetry
A Villanelle has 19 lines which are grouped into five tercets and a concluding quatrain. The first and third line are repeated alternately.

This list gives you only the major poetry styles. There are many more kinds of poetry and new styles that are also being invented, so the list can go on and on.