Poetry Forms
Couplet
A poem made of two lines of end rhyming
poetry that usually have the same meter.
Example:
I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
Diamante
A 7 lined poem. That is diamond in shape
Line 1: Noun
Line 2: Two Adjectives describing the first noun
Line 3: Three -ing words describing the first noun
Line 4: Four words: two about the first noun and two
about the antonym or synonym of the first noun
Line 5: Three -ing words about the antonym or
synonym
Line 6: Two adjectives describing the antonym or
synonym
Line 7: Antonym or synonym for the first noun
Diamante Example
Rain
humid, damp
refreshing, dripping, splattering
wet, slippery, cold, slushy
sliding, melting, freezing
frigid, icy
Snow
Haiku
Unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of
three unrhymed lines
Line 1: five syllables
Line 2: seven syllables
Line 3: five syllables
Haiku is usually written in the present tense
and focuses on nature.
Example: warm soup in a bowl
letters of the alphabet
hang on the teaspoon
Cinquain
Short, usually unrhymed poem consisting of
twenty-two syllables distributed as 2, 4, 6, 8,
2, in five lines
Line 1: Noun
Line 2: Description of Noun
Line 3: Action
Line 4: Feeling or Effect
Line 5: Synonym of the initial noun
Cinquain Example
Spaghetti
Messy, spicy
Slurping, sliding, falling
Between my plate and mouth
Delicious
Epitaph
A phrase or statement written in memory
of a person who has died, especially as
an inscription on a tombstone.
EXAMPLE:
John Donne (1572-1631)
Reader, I am to let thee know,
Donne's body only lies below;
For could the grave his soul comprise,
Earth would be richer than the skies.
Sonnet
A Sonnet is a poem consisting of 14 lines
(iambic pentameter) with a particular
rhyming scheme:
Examples of a rhyming scheme:
#1) abab cdcd efef gg
#2) abba cddc effe gg
#3) abba abba cdcd cd
Iambic Pentameter
Pentameter is simply penta, which means
5, meters. So a line of poetry written in
pentameter has 5 feet, or 5 sets of stressed
and unstressed syllables.
An iamb is a foot or beat consisting of an
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
syllable,
In basic iambic pentameter, a line would
have 5 feet of iambs.
Sonnet Example
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Acrostic
The first letter of each line spells a word,
usually using the same words as in the title.
DOG
Devoted,
On
Guard.
Shape Poetry
The poem to takes on the shape of its
subject.
Therefore, if the subject of your poem were
of a flower, then the poem would be shaped
like a flower.
If it were of a fish, then the poem would take
on the shape of a fish
Shape Poem Example
STARS
UMBRELLA
Free Verse
An irregular form of poetry in which the
content is free of traditional rules of
versification, (freedom from fixed meter or
rhyme)..
Free Verse Example
The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens