Arts & Culture

Oh Poets, the Forms You Should Know!

Why use poetic form?  Poets who use a traditional form follow the footsteps of the greatest writers of all time, and by adapting traditional forms, they can even make history.  Poetic forms aren’t just for master poets, however. Everyone runs into poetry, whether in English class, in casual reading, or even on Internet memes. It is simply inevitable.  When this happens, it is beneficial to know some poetic forms in order to understand the history, style, and motivation behind a poem.  Furthermore, contrary to popular high school belief, poetic forms don’t have to be boring! After moving past the consonants, pentameters, and stanzas, one is sure to find a whole world of ludicrous, novel, and enchanting ideas of how a poem can be written.

Everyone who’s ever taken a literature class has met the usual sonnets, terza rima, and epic poetry, complete with an exhaustive explanation of rhyme, meter, and poetic devices.  However, classic poetic forms are much more diverse than those commonly taught in the classroom. Some other classic poetic forms, difficult forms that can challenge even the best poets, are the triolet, the cinquain, and the villanelle. The triolet, a French relative of the rondeau, repeats only two rhymes throughout the eight-line poem: ABaAabAB. As poets.org puts it, the triolet is “deceptively simple.”  The cinquain (or quintain or quintet), on the other hand, truly is simple, with five lines in varying combinations of two or three rhymes. Surpassing most other forms in difficulty, however, is the villanelle, which uses only two rhymes and repeats one of two lines in every stanza. The hardest part is finding lines that can be reused cleverly so the poem does more than just repeat itself. Intrigued readers can do further research and attempt to write one, but they will undoubtedly die in agony. (Although, to be honest, I have survived writing three villanelles myself.)

Finally, there are many poems that entertain and are entertaining to write! First, the classic concrete poem, exemplified in the picture above, may be one of the most enjoyable, creative English assignments ever: poetry as art in the form of the thing it is describing. Simple yet genius!  Another artistic form is erasure, a form of found poetry, in which large blocks of an existing text are covered, and the words which remain form a new work. Limericks, five-lined funny rhymes, and other styles and forms of humorous verse make for good light reading, though some poets criticize that the form does not illustrate real poetry. Haiku, in my opinion, is one of the most fun forms of poetry to use. Though the true haiku is limited mostly to the imagery of nature, it can be taken anywhere with its multipurpose succinctness. Finally, the cento, or collage poem, uses lines from other poems, which is very enjoyable to write for those who know the lines of favorite poems by heart.

There are many unique poetic forms which readers and writers of poetry don’t need to know by heart, unless one reaches extensively into specific niches of poetry, like Arabic or Indian verse. Nevertheless, they are fun to explore and attempt. Foreign forms specific to a time and place include the aisling, an Irish dream poem where Ireland appears in the form of a woman. Some forms are grammatically bizarre, like verbless poetry, which hearkens back to a similar literary style, the lipogram. Some types of poetry are intended for multiple authors, such as the renga, a Japanese form written by a pair or small group of poets writing alternating three-line and two-line stanzas. Try something similar with your writing group and see where it takes you!  It doesn’t have to be exactly like the traditional form as new poetic forms are always being created. For example, the modern bop, introduced by Afaa Michael Weaver, is an argumentative poem with a three-line stanza, six-line stanza, and final three-line stanza.

Despite the list-like format, this article was so interesting to research and write! I hope some other experienced poets out there find these different forms interesting and maybe even new.  As for the casual readers, maybe they’ll learn that poetry isn’t always boring!

 

Photo Credit: https://www.slideshare.net/andyfisher/poetic-form

 

Sources:

“Glossary of Poetic Terms.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/glossary.

“Poetic Forms and Their Definitions.” Author Learning Center, Author Learning Center, 2018, https://www.authorlearningcenter.com/writing/poetry/w/styles/7138/poetic-forms-and-their-definitions.

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