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Poetic Forms Glossary

Poetry Guide Click the Poetry Guide icon to read an in-depth entry for that poetic form.

Acrostic Poem:

A poem or series of lines in which certain letters, usually the first in each line, form a name, motto, or message when read in sequence. Use the letters at the end of lines too - or in the middle.

Allegory
Allegory:

The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form. A story, picture, or play employing such representation.

Alphabet
Poem
Alphabet Poem:

A poem of 26 words. Each word begins with the next letter of the alphabet.

Antonymy
Antonymy:

The replacement of a category of compositional elements by their opposites.

Ballad:

A narrative poem, often of folk origin and intended to be sung, consisting of simple stanzas and usually having a refrain.

Bananagram
Bananagram:

An anagram from which, ideally, all possibility of rational meaning has been removed.

Blazon
Blazon:

A poem which itemizes the qualities of a loved one.

Beautiful
Outlaw
Beautiful Outlaw:

A work in which each line or sentence includes all the letters of the alphabet except for the letter that appears in a given name (or other series of letters) in the position corresponding to that of the line (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc).

Blues
Blues:

A form of folk or popular poetry. Graphic imagery and themes drawn from a wide range of group and personal experiences distinguish blues lyrics. The blues can also exist as instrumental and vocal music, as a psychological state, as a lifestyle and as a philosophical stance.

Branching
system
Branching system:

A text structured so as to allow multiple readings according to the reader's choice.

Burlesque
Burlesque:

A work designed to ridicule attitudes, styles, or subject matter by either handling an elevated subject in a trivial manner or a low subject with mock dignity. The burlesque may be written for the sheer fun of it; usually, however, it is a form of satire.

Calligram
Calligram:

The visual shape of the poem relates to the subject. (i.e.: a poem about rain looks like rain falling).

Cento
Cento:

A patchwork poem made entirely of pieces from poems by other authors. A cento is a Roman poetic form meaning stitched together: each line of the poem is drawn from a different source. "Cento" also resonates with the number one hundred, and many centos are a hundred lines long.

Chorus
Chorus:

Among the ancient Greeks the chorus was a group of people, wearing masks, who sang or chanted verse while performing dance-like maneuvers at religious festivals. Choruses also served as commentators on the characters and events who expressed traditional moral, religious and social attitudes. During the Elizabethan Age the term "chorus" was applied to a single person who spoke the prologue and epilogue to a play and sometimes introduced each at as well.

Cinquain:

A five-line stanza.

Concrete Poetry:

Refers to the placement of words on the page so that a picture is formed containing the image of the poem itself. Through this, concrete poetry is able to provide a multiple experience.

Confessional Poetry:

Refers to a type of narrative and lyric verse which deals with the facts and intimate mental and physical experiences of the poet's own life. In confessional poetry, the speaker often describes her confused chaotic state, which becomes a metaphor for the state of the world around her.

Definitional
literature
Definitional literature:

Each meaningful word in a text is replaced by its dictionary definition.

Dialog
Dialog:

A poem of dialog between two people involving quarrel and reconciliation.

Dirge
Dirge:

A mournful or elegiac poem or other literary work.

Dramatic
Monologue
Dramatic Monologue:

A poem in which a story is related by a single person (not the poet) speaking to one or more persons; we know of the listener's presence and what they say and do only from clues in the discourse of the speaker. In a dramatic monologue, the speaker utters the entire poem in a specific situation at a critical moment.

Elegy:

A poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person.

Epic Poetry:

A long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds.

Epigram:

A short, witty poem expressing a single thought or observation.

Epiphany
Epiphany:

A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: "I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself" (Frank Maier).

Epistle
Epistle:

A literary composition in the form of a letter.

Found Poetry:

The presentation of a borrowed text or found object as a poem or as part of a poem.

Free Verse:

Verse composed of variable, usually unrhymed lines having no fixed metrical pattern.

Haiku (or Hokku):

"A Japanese lyric verse form having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, traditionally invoking an aspect of nature or the seasons. A true haiku is only written in Japanese. If you are writing in any other language, the syllable rule (5 7 5) does not apply. Still fun to try as an exercise."

Intentional
Mistranslation
Intentional Mistranslation:

A poem based on a translation. Look at a poem in a foreign language and translate it simply by the sound of the words. Just look at the words, focus on certain words, ignore others.

Interior
Monologue
Interior Monologue:

A passage of writing presenting a character's inner thoughts and emotions in a direct, sometimes disjointed or fragmentary manner.

Lescurean
word
square
Lescurean word square:

The 24 possible arrangements of 4 given words.

Light Verse:

A term applied t a great variety of poems that use an ordinary speaking voice and a relaxed manner to treat their subjects gaily, or playfully, or with a good - natured satire. Its subjects may be serious or petty; the defining quality is the tone of voice used and the attitude of the lyric or narrative speaker towards the subject.

Limerick:

A light humorous, nonsensical, or bawdy verse of five anapestic lines usually with the rhyme scheme aabba.

List
Poem
List Poem:

A catalog poem. An itemization of things/events.

Lyric Poem:

Of or relating to a category of poetry that expresses subjective thoughts and feelings, often in a songlike style or form.

Metrical
Romance
Metrical Romance:

A narrative poem celebrating love, war, and religion.

Mock Epic/Heroic Poetry:

A poem that imitates the elaborate form and ceremonious style of the epic genre, but applies it to a commonplace or trivial subject matter.

Monologue
Monologue:

A literary composition in the form of a soliloquy.

Narrative Poetry:

A story, whether in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do.

Nonsense Verse:

Regular length poem, consistent punctuation, made-up language.

Occasional
Occasional:

A poem written in commemoration of a specific occasion such as a birthday, marriage, a death, a military engagement or victory, the dedication of a public building or the opening performance of a play.

Ode:

A lyric poem of some length, usually of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style and formal stanzaic structure.

Oral
Formulaic
Oral Formulaic:

Poetry that is composed and transmitted by singers or reciters - includes both narrative forms (epic and ballad) and lyric forms. There is no fixed version of an oral composition because each performer tends to render it differently, and sometimes introduces differences between one performance and the next.

Palinode:

A poem in which the author retracts something said in a previous poem.

Panegyric
Panegyric:

A panegyric is poetry that praises something.

Parody
Parody:

A type of high burlesque which imitates or exaggerates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work, or the distinctive style of a particular author.

Pastoral
Pastoral:

Poetry that describes the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds who live a timeless, painless life in a world that is full of beauty, music and love.

Perverb
Perverb:

The combination of the 1st half of one proverb with the second half of another.

Prose Poetry:

A poem that visually appears to be prose (i.e.: no line breaks).

Renga:

Renga (linked verse) and Kika (branched verse) is a form of Japanese poetry. A typical renga sequence comprised 100 stanzas composed by several people taking turns adding verses. Each stanza of a renga is like a link in a chain. Five or seven syllables per line.

Ritual
Ritual:

A series of directions, mentions of sacred places and objects.

Satire
Satire:

A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.

Soliloquy
Soliloquy:

A dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to themself or reveals their thoughts without addressing a listener.

Transplant
Transplant:

Two texts of similar length but radically differing genres having been chosen, each text is rewritten using the vocabulary of the other.

Ubi
Sunt
Ubi Sunt:

A catalog listing of names of heroes or poets who have gone away. The poet inquires after their absence with a passage beginning: Ubi sunt? (Where are?)

Xanadu
Xanadu:

A poem depicting a Utopian setting or place of idyllic beauty.