Poetry
Structures & Forms
What are STRUCTURES of
poetry?
O Structures refer to TYPES of poems.
O Just like the structure of a building, the
structure of the poem is its framework.
Limerick
O Limerick – a humorous verse of three long
and two short lines rhyming aabba.
Limerick Example
There was an old man with a beard
Who said, “It’s just how I feared!
Two owls and a hen
Four larks and a wren
Have all built their nests in my beard.”
- Anonymous
Sonnet
O Sonnet – a poem of 14 lines usually written
in iambic pentameter
• Iambic Pentameter -- Ten syllables in each
line with five pairs of alternating unstressed
and stressed syllables
• The rhythm in each line sounds like:
ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / baBUM
Sonnet Example
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
--William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
Narrative Poem
O Narrative Poem – tells a story/has a plot
Narrative Poem Example
'Tis eight o'clock,—a clear March night,
The moon is up,—the sky is blue,
The owlet, in the moonlight air,
Shouts from nobody knows where;
He lengthens out his lonely shout,
Halloo! halloo! a long halloo!
From “The Idiot Boy” by William Wordsworth
Free Verse
O Free Verse – poetry that has no regular
rhythm or rhyme scheme
Free Verse Example
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
“Fog” by Carl Sandburg
What are FORMS of poetry?
O Forms of poetry are the building blocks that
make up a poem.
O Examples of forms: stanzas, literary devices,
and rhyme scheme
Stanza
O A stanza is a group of lines forming the basic
meter in a poem. It is like a paragraph in
poetry.
O A stanza is also known as a verse.
How many stanzas are in this
poem?
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
“Fog” by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
“Fog” by Carl Sandburg
Literary Devices
O Literary devices are specific techniques
authors use to express ideas.
O Examples of literary devices: alliteration,
onomatopoeia, simile, metaphor,
personification, imagery
Examples of Literary Devices
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
What literary device is used?
How do you know?
What is the meaning?
Rhyme Scheme
O Rhyme scheme refers to the ordered pattern
of rhymes at the ends of the lines of a poem.
O Rhyme scheme is identified with letters.
O Example: ABAB
Rhyme Scheme Example
There was an old man with a beard
Who said, “It’s just how I feared!
Two owls and a hen
Four larks and a wren
Have all built their nests in my beard.”
*Label the pattern of rhyme in this poem using
letters.
Rhyme Scheme Example
There was an old man with a beard A
Who said, “It’s just how I feared! A
Two owls and a hen B
Four larks and a wren B
Have all built their nests in my beard.” A