Verse Forms

• It is a poem of nineteen lines
• It has five stanza, each of three lines, with a final one of four lines
• The first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas
• The third line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas.
• The two refrain lines follow each other to become the second-to-last lines of the poem.
• The rhyme scheme is aba.

• The repetition does not lend this poem to narrative. It generally does not tell a story.
• The repetition does lend itself to portraying emotions.

• Thirty nine lines
• Six stanza of six lines each
• Stanza followed by an envoi of three lines
• Unrhymed
• The same six end-words must occur in every stanza but in a changing order that follow a set pattern. (lexical repitition)
• Each stanza must follow on the last by taking a reversed pairing of the previous lines.
• First line of second stanza must pair its end-words with the last line of the first. The second line of the second stanza must do this with the first line and so on.
• The envoi, or last three lines, must gather up and use all six end words.

• The amount of repetition builds up as the poems continues.
• The repetition of words (instead of lines) make the poem like a game of meaning.
• Sestinas are perfect for the witty poet.
• The history of this form comes from
French court poets who sang their poems for French nobles. They competed to make the wittiest, most elaborate and difficult styles.

• Lends itself to ordinary speech, which makes it really liked by modern poets.
• Often is circular, so not good for a narrative.

• Each pantoum stanza must be four lines long.
• The length is unspecified but the pantoum must begin and end with the same line.
• The second and fourth lines of the first quatrain become the first and third lines of the next, and so on with succeeding quatrains
• The rhyming of each quatrain is abab.
• The final quatrain changes this pattern.
• In the final quatrain the unrepeated first and third lines are used in reverse as second and fourth lines.

• Unusual among strict forms of verse because it can be any length.
• Slowest of all verse forms because it takes four steps forward and the two steps back.
• Perfect form for evoking times past.

• Meter – the Greek word for measure—it is a way to measure poems, and most often refers to the stresses in a poem’s line.
• Feet—patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.
• Iambic – a foot with the stress pattern of a short stress followed by a long stess.

• It is a short narrative, which is usually—but not always —arranged in quatrains with a distinctive and memorable meter.
• The usual ballad meter is a first and thrid line with four stresses —iambic tetrameter—and then a second and fourth line with three stresses — iambic trimeter.
• The rhyme scheme is abab or abcb .
• The subject matter is distinctive: almost always communal stories about lost love, supernatual happenings, or recent events.
• The ballad maker uses popular and local speech and dialogue often and vividly to convey the story. This is especially a feature of early ballads.

• Poem of fourteen lines, usually iambic
• There are two kinds of sonnet, with very different histories and forms: the
Petrarchan and the Shakespearean.
• The Petrarchan sonnet is Italian in origin, has an octave of eight lines and a sestet of six. The rhyme scheme of the octave is ababcdcd and sestet is cdecde.

• The Shakespearean sonnet was developed in Engla nd and has far more than just surface differences from the
Petrarchan.
• The rhyme scheme of the Shakespearean sonnet is ababcdcdefefgg . There is no octave/sestet structure to it.
• The final couplet is a defining feature.