Poetic Forms
Found Poetry
Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.
A pure found poem
consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.
Many Poets have chosen to incorporate snippets of found texts into larger poems, most significantly Ezra Pound. His Cantos includes letters written by presidents and popes, as well as an array of official documents from governments and banks. The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, uses many different texts, including Wagnerian opera, Shakespearian theater, and Greek mythology. Other poets who combined found elements with their poetry are William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, and Louis Zukofsky.
Book Spine Poetry
What is it?
Book Spine Poetry started as an internet meme that goes back to the work of artist Nina Katchadourian. In the early 1990s, she took photographs of stacked book titles that, when read together, created short sentences and stories.
Concrete Poetry
Concrete poetry is one of the more experimental poetic forms available to poets. Concrete poems use space and sound to communicate the meanings of the words. Words can cover other words; and the poem has trouble standing without the structure. Concrete poetry is more visual than other poetic forms.
Haiku
Haiku (俳句 high-koo) are short poems that use sensory language to capture a feeling or image. They are often inspired by an element of nature, a moment of beauty, or another poignant experience.
Haiku poems are 17 syllables long in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively.
Lyric Poetry
Originally a composition meant for musical accompaniment.
The term refers to a short poem in which the poet, the poet’s persona, or another speaker expresses personal feelings.
Bread and Music
by Conrad Aiken
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovèd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,—
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
Sonnet
A Sonnet is a poem of an expressive thought or idea made up of 14 lines, each being 10 syllables long. Its rhymes are arranged according to one of the schemes – Italian, where eight lines called an octave consisting of two quatrains which normally open the poem as the question are followed by six lines called a sestet that are the answer, or the more common English which is three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet.
The Structure of a Sonnet
ab ab, cdcd, efef, gg - English
abba abba cdecde - Italian
Sonnet
Free Verse
Free verse is an open form of poetry. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech.
Epic Poetry
An epic is a long, often book-length, narrative in verse form that retells the heroic journey of a single person, or group of persons. Elements that typically distinguish epics include superhuman deeds, fabulous adventures, highly stylized language, and a blending of lyrical and dramatic traditions.