Poetry
Types and terms
Types of poetry
• We will study 10 types
of poetry:
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Sonnet
Lyric
Ballad
Ode
Elegy
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Limerick
Haiku
Free Verse
Blank Verse
Pastoral/Romantic
Sonnets
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Sonnets originated in
England and Italy
They are rhymed
14 (English) lines or
16 (Italian) lines.
Iambic pentameter (5
beats – 10 syllables)
• Once by the Pacific (Robert Frost)
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the light was spoken.
Blank Verse
• Unrhymed iambic
pentameter
• The Seven Ages of Man
(W. Shakespeare)
• http://www.poemhunte
r.com/poem/all-theworld-s-a-stage/
Lyric
• Lyric poetry tells
the authors
internal
thoughts
• Does not tell a
story!
• Does not have
to rhyme!
• Fire and Ice (Robert Frost)
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
•
The Ballad of Birmingham (D. Randall)
“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Ballad
• Ballads are
narrative (story)
poems that are
usually sung
• They do not have
to rhyme!
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren’t good for a little child.”
“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?”
Ode
• Odes are poems that
are dedicated to a
particular person or
thing
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
(Keats)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Ode_on_a_Grecian
_Urn
Limerick
• A limerick is a
humorous poem
• Must be five lines
• Rhyme: AABBA
• Unknown
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.
Elegy
•
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A poem written as a
lament for the dead or
about death
Sometimes read at
funerals and wakes
• Because I could not stop for Death (E. Dickinson)
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
Haiku
• Japanese
• 17 syllables
– 5 in first line
– 7 in second
– 5 in last line
Focus on nature
• Miura Chora
Get out of my road
and allow me to plant these
bamboos. Mr. Toad.
Pastoral/Romantic
• Focus is on nature and
the power of nature
• Often contain
references to rivers,
streams, sky etc.
• I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud (Wordsworth)
http://www.bartleby.com/
145/ww260.html
Free Verse
• No consistent rhyme or
meter – free!
• A Blessing (J. Wright)
• http://www.poetryfoun
dation.org/poem/1757
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