Styles of Poetry

Poetry is language in art form. It’s the act of communicating beauty and passion with words. Some poems are free flowing while others follow a definite rhyme and rhythm. However it’s written, the words used are strong words designed to evoke passionate feelings from the readers. The following paragraphs will introduce you to some of the different styles of poetry written by people.

Haiku is a very simple style of poetry that can be fun for people to play with. This poem is written with a specific set of lines with a certain number of syllables per line. The most popular would be three lines with a 5,7,5 syllable pattern. Another version is called a Tanka, which utilizes the 5.7.5.7.5 pattern. The words are kept simple but yet able to evoke strong emotion. Haiku is a playful, fun style of poetry.

There are Ballads, which are stories. These stories are told in a narrative poetry style. When spoken, it should be very smooth almost like singing a song. Typically these ballads are written in sets of four sentences with the ending word of the second and fourth ones rhyming with each other. Ballads don’t have rigid rules to follow like Haikus but they should sound very musical to the ear.

Sonnets have been around for ages. Shakespeare wrote many of them in his time. Sonnets have specific rules. The most basic is that it consists of fourteen lines each having the same specific number of syllables each. There are very distinct rhymes at the end of certain lines. If you can follow those rules with the words you come up with then creating a Sonnet should be quite simple for you.

There is also a form of poetry designed to be written for a specific thing or person. This is called The Ode. The title will always begin with the word “ode”. The subject directly following the word ode will be the topic of the poem. This is a simple poem about a particular topic that also follows some type of rhyming pattern. It’s a poem that shows the readers what the poet thinks of a certain subject in a flowing poetic way.

The Dramatic Monologue defines a monologue which would be the poem acted out by someone other than the poet in a dramatic way. These types of poems are typically written to show the action as well as the character.

The Villanelle is a fun style of poem. This one begins with five three line stanzas and concludes with a four line stanza. The poet uses only two rhymes throughout the whole poem, positioning them in strategic points of the poem. The rules are quite simple and if one can just come up with the right set of rhymes, the rest is relatively easy to follow.

The Sestina is one of the most difficult forms to learn. It consists of a very complicated pattern that has to be followed to the letter in order for it to be a Sestina. There are seven stanzas. Six lines in the beginning and finishing off with the seventh having three. It’s a very precise selection and positioning of words so that each of the first six stanzas uses the same words only in a very definite varying order. Then the seventh stanza which consists of three lines will pick up on the words used in the first six also in a very specific order. This type of poetry takes a lot of study and work to master.

Pick a style of poetry and try your hand at it. The rules are quite specific and simple to follow. For those who like free-form poetry without any rules, there are many of those also. The whole purpose behind poetry is to create an art form by using language.