Elegy
Melancholy poem lamenting the death of the poem’s
subject. Elegies often end with consoling messages.
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a great
example of an elegy. Written by Thomas Gray, the
poem is 128 lines, and it ends with an “epitaph.”
Epitaph
Short poem intended as an inscription on a
grave – can serve as a brief “elegy.”
“Upon a Child That Died” by Robert Herrick
Here she lies, a pretty bud,
Lately made of flesh and blood,
Who as soon fell fast asleep
As her little eyes did peep.
Give her strewings, but not stir
The earth that lightly covers her.
Ode
• Formal, ceremonious poem
• Addresses & celebrates a person, place,
object, idea, image or emotion
• Stanza form varies
America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.
Let the sun shine again
on the four corners of the world
you thought of first but do not
own, or keep like a convenience.
People are your own word, you
invented that locus and term.
Here, you said and say, is
where we are. Give back
what we are, these people you made,
us, and nowhere but you to be.
Hymn
A poem praising God or the divine. Hymns
are often sung.
Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the
Republic” is a famous example.
Sonnet
14-line poem; “sonnet” means “little song”
There are many types of sonnets, but the
most famous is the English or
Shakespearean Sonnet:
One stanza of three quatrains
Ends with a couplet
Rhyme scheme is: ABABCDCDEFEFGG
The rhyme scheme can vary a bit
“America” by Claude McKay
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
Ballad
Popular poems, narratives (tell a story),
began as an oral tradition. Ballads do have
a rhyme scheme.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” is a ballad.
Villanelle
French verse form
Six stanzas
First five stanzas have three lines
Last stanza is a quatrain (four lines)
Includes a refrain
Has a specific rhyme scheme
See examples:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
“One Art”
by Elizabeth Bishop
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.
Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,
And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.
There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.
“The House on the Hill”
by Edwin Arlington
Robinson
Japanese Forms
Haiku
Three un-rhyming lines
Line 1 is 5 syllables
Line 2 is 7 syllables
Line 3 is 5 syllables
On a branch
floating downriver
a cricket, singing.
by Kobayashi Issa (translated by Jane Hirshfield)
Japanese Forms
Tanka
Five lines with 31 syllables in all:
5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllables
7 syllables
7 syllables
FOR SATORI
In the spring of joy,
when even the mud chuckles,
my soul runs rabid,
snaps at its own bleeding heels,
and barks: “What is happiness?”
SOMBER GIRL
She never saw fire
from heaven or hotly fought
with God; but her eyes
smolder for Hiroshima
and the cold death of Buddha.