Types of Poems to Write

Poetry and human existence have an eternal relationship to share, a relationship that weaves a rich fabric of taciturn thoughts, verdant words and intuitive sensations. The succulent soul of poetry supersedes the morphologic thoughts into emotive persuasions. Poetry is an indefinable sac of sentiments that chooses to have a submissive demeanor yet utter volumes. Poetry finds solace in words. A string of letters carefully beaded, where emotions are stuttered with sensations, prove to be virtual attestators of poetry.

"What is poetry?", you may ask. Well, if you want to be spared of retributive perspectives, you might as well not know the underlying essence of poetry. After reading several scholars and authors of literary repute, I have managed to develop a self assisting mode of defining poetry. Poetry, for me, to me, is indefinable. Poetry is a labyrinth, the more you try to explicate and decipher the true meaning of it, the more you would find yourself coiling around it. Every poem has a soul of its own. The soul devours us, mystifies, subjugates and instigates us to unravel its virgin connotations. However, human mind has not advanced to an extent where it could ravish and rip poetry into granules of rudiments. Poetry is like a hot air balloon, the more you spray your breath to fluff it up, the more the mysteries you have to untie. On the other hand, poetry is like a cardigan you have outgrown, the more you try to snug yourself in, the more you feel stifled. What an irony, yet both are indeed, sides of the same coin! It is that one universal ladder with parallel and ambidextrous rungs that have neither an end nor a beginning. By this statement I do not mean to assert that poetry is oblivious in nature. On the contrary, I mean to opine that poetry has no subjective boundaries.

To write poetry is like putting your unconscious reservoir of emotions on paper. Your fingers covet the grip on the quill, but your subconscious commands the movement of the quill. When we write poetry we are bosomed by a cathartic sequence of events that breakdown nervously on blank surfaces, waiting for impressions to contour themselves in the form of words. Emotions are poured out, the heart cracks open and the intellect fractures when poems are written. You laugh, cry, sigh, reflect, think, believe, subjugate, sustain, simplify, resonate, respect, surpass, stupefy when you read poetry. Catharsis is the result, thanks to the poet who pens down poetry using apt descriptions, lauded with unbeatable structures. Alliteration, allegory, metaphor, simile, personification, pun, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, burlesque, euphemism, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, satire and malapropism are the tools with which a poet carves his work, making it attractive, with perfect articulations and flawless configurations. Line breaks, the appearance of the poem, the pace of the poem, the mood of the poem and its topographic formation are methods through which the poet breathes life into words eliciting a fountain of emotions.

John Keats, Tennyson, Coleridge, T. S Eliot, Percy Bysshe Shelley have all believed in penning poetry with emotions floating, thereby synthesizing words and letters. However, they have literary qualification that covet them to write poetry of a specific genre. They were indeed specialists in composing poetry that spells their genre. Where Coleridge spoke of the fractured jaw and eyes that cannot see with utmost cynicism, Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote elegy's with a tone and mood that delivers a biographical obituary. Eliot with his hyperbole, satire and sarcasm emerged to be the most acclaimed American English poet. Keats with his ode on a unravished bride, the Grecian Urn propagated the frame where time froze and distilled itself with quietness of being one with eternal nature, Percy Bysshe Shelly was the one who maintained free love as his perpetual background and foreground on which his poetry presses its head. Every poet has his own signature style of composing poetry and it is through these styles that you may learn the types of poetry to write on and write with to hold your pen better.

Types of Poetry you Could Excavate

Ballad: Perhaps one of the oldest style of writing poetry where words narrated a story. A ballad has stanzas made up of either seven or eight or ten lines. It ends with a four or five-line stanza. Each stanza ends with the same line. The ending is called 'a refrain'.

Elegy: It is a sad poem that has its roots buried deep in the memories of a beloved who is no more. It is a lyrical obituary displaying the unconditional love of the poet.

Couplet: This is one of the most popular type of poetry form employed. The couplets have stanzas of two lines and the words with which the lines end are meant to rhyme.

Epitaph: An epitaph is a short poem that is in the form of a commemoration, that signifies that a loved one has passed away. It also supplicates the lines with heavily laden words that describe and reflect the life of the deceased person.

Rhyme Royal: A poetry type introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer consisting of seven lines in a stanza with iambic pentameter serving to be the style of composition.

Ode: An ode is a method of writing poetry being serious in nature having a long and structured set of stanzas to form the conspicuous crux of the hidden meaning of the poem.

Quatrain: This type of poem has four lines in a stanza where the second and fourth lines rhyme with each other, thus having a similar syllable structure.

Terza Rima: A poetry type where the lines consist of ten to eleven syllables with three lines is called the tercets. Dante, the Italian poet, is crowned with the credit of inventing this poetry type.

Cinquain: This is another unique type of poetry style. It is made up of five lines. The first line is just one word often ending up being the title of the poem. The second line has two words describing the first line. The third line has three words, conducting an action sequence in the poem. The fourth line is four words describing thoughts and feelings. And the fifth line is a repetition of the first line, that is, it has the title of the poem being the only word.

Doggerel: This writing style has taken on the humorous armor with a notorious twist to it. However, this poetry type is not taken very seriously as it consists of very little literary stance to contribute.

Iambic Pentameter: This style is a tough way of writing poetry and is used by classical poets. This style is heavily punctuated with syllables to create a specific mood of the poem.

Cacophony: This is yet another type of poetry penning that revolves around combining sharp and harsh sounds. This was an onomatopoeic form of poetry writing that was primarily the brain child of Lewis Carroll.

Sonnet: This type of poem contains fourteen lines with a conventional rhyme scheme.

Imagery: This form of poetry touches upon senses that have the power to imagine. The images give an ulterior meaning to work your mind with deep sensations of picturing the panorama. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by Eliot bears testimony to this type of poetry.

Stream of Thought: The stream of thought poetry is your mind drafted on paper. No flowery language is entertained, it is just a free association writing that the writer indulges in.

Allegory: An allegory has a narrative that has a meaning underlying in the cushions of words. It proposes to narrate a story that has two meanings - the literal and the symbolic meaning. Fairie Queen by Edmund Spenser is one such testimonial for this type of poetry.

Haiku: A Japanese method of writing poetry. It has three lines of five, seven and five syllables each. The Haiku poems focus on nature and habitat.

Free Verse: The meter and the rhyme are not given importance. This form of poetry is quite popular with modern and postmodern poets.

Epic: This poem is a narration of a long story. Epics, are much elaborate in their descriptions and do not miss to highlight the details.

Limerick: A short witty and clownish drollery of sorts that has an alternating metrical structure. A limerick contains five lines in a stanza with the metrical structure and rhyme scheme of the first, third and the fifth line being in sync, containing seven to ten syllables each. The second and fourth lines are in perfect harmony with the rhyme scheme and metrical structure containing five to seven syllables.

Romanticism: Nature and love served to be the backbone of such poetry where the writing was inspired by the individual experiences of the poet.

Classicism: Beauty, formalist ideologies, simplicity and emotional constrictions were the signs of classic poetry. The classicists were of the view that nature served to be a background for poetry and not the backbone of poetry.

The mere mention of poetry makes my heart go into a kerfuffle and experience pure tenacity. Poems can never deceive your heart, but can play pranks with your mind, for you cannot exist without your heart, but ah! ... with the mind, you live to be called 'the fool'.