Poetry, Drama, Prose, Novel
Poetry, Drama, Prose, Novel
Types of Poetry
ABC:
A poem consisting of five lines that create a mood, picture, or feeling. The first word of each line is in alphabetical order.
Example:
Apples ripe on branches high,
Birds singing in the sky,
Clouds drifting, soft and white,
Dewdrops glisten in morning light,
Every day brings new delight.
Acrostic:
Poetry in which certain letters, usually the first in each line, form a word or message when read in sequence.
Example (from Edgar Allan Poe's "Elizabeth"):
Elizabeth it is in vain you say,
"Love not" — thou sayest it in so sweet a way:
In vain those words from thee or L.E.L.
Zantippe's talents had enforced so well:
Ah! if that language from thy heart arise,
Breath it less gently forth — and veil thine eyes.
Ballad:
A narrative poem that tells a story, often resembling a folk tale or legend, and may have a repeated refrain.
Example (from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge):
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
Ballade:
Poetry with three stanzas of seven, eight, or ten lines, followed by a shorter final stanza of four or five lines. All stanzas end with the same one-line refrain.
Example (from "Ballade des Pendus" by François Villon):
Frères humains qui après nous vivez,
N'ayez les cœurs contre nous endurcis,
Car, se pitié de nous pauvres avez,
Dieu en aura plus tost de vous mercis.
Blank Verse:
Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, often resembling the rhythms of natural speech.
Example (from "Paradise Lost" by John Milton):
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.
Bio:
A poem written about one's life, personality traits, and ambitions.
Example:
Born in the heart of the bustling city,
A dreamer, a poet, full of creativity.
With pen in hand and mind aflight,
Writing words that dance in the light.
This is the story of a life, a journey.
Burlesque:
Poetry that treats a serious subject humorously, often using exaggerated or grotesque elements.
Example (from "Hudibras" by Samuel Butler):
But conjure up your nosy spright,
And deal your blows with all your might;
To equal which, the poets say,
No man can make a worse than they,
Nor in your own disputes ever lose,
But still have cards to turn up use.
Canzone:
A medieval Italian lyric style poetry with five or six stanzas and a shorter ending stanza.
Example (from Petrarch's Canzoniere):
Chiare, fresche et dolci acque,
Ove le belle membra
Pose colei che sola a me par donna;
Gentil ramo ove piacque,
(Con sospir mi rimembra)
A lei di fare al bel fiancho colonna.
Carpe Diem:
Latin expression meaning 'seize the day.' Carpe diem poems have a theme of living for today.
Example (from "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell):
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Cinquain:
Poetry with five lines, where line 1 has one word (the title), line 2 has two words that describe the title, line 3 has three words that tell the action, line 4 has four words that express the feeling, and line 5 has one word which recalls the title.
Example:
Moonlight
Soft glow
Dancing on quiet waves
Love's embrace in whispered sighs
Serenity
Classicism:
Poetry which holds the principles and ideals of beauty that are characteristic of Greek and Roman art, architecture, and literature.
Example (from "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats):
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Couplet:
A couplet has rhyming stanzas made up of two lines.
Example (from "An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope):
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
Dramatic Monologue:
A type of poem spoken to a listener, where the speaker addresses a specific topic while the listener unwittingly reveals details about him/herself.
Example (from "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning):
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Elegy:
A sad and thoughtful poem about the death of an individual.
Example (from "In Memoriam A.H.H." by Alfred, Lord Tennyson):
Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Epic:
An extensive, serious poem that tells the story about a heroic figure.
Example (from "The Iliad" by Homer):
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus,
that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.
Epigram:
A very short, ironic, and witty poem usually written as a brief couplet or quatrain.
Example (from "An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope):
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
Epitaph:
A commemorative inscription on a tomb or mortuary monument written to praise the deceased.
Example (from Shakespeare's gravestone):
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Epithalamium (Epithalamion):
A poem written in honor of the bride and groom.
Example (from "Epithalamion" by Edmund Spenser):
Calm was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play.
Free Verse (Vers Libre):
Poetry written in either rhyme or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern.
Example (from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman):
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Ghazal:
A short lyrical poem that arose in Urdu, often themed around love and romance, and consisting of 5 to 15 couplets.
Example (from "Ghazal" by Rumi):
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
Haiku:
A Japanese poem composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, often capturing a moment in nature.
Example (by Matsuo Basho):
An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond—
Splash! Silence again.
Horatian Ode:
Short lyric poem written in two or four-line stanzas, often addressing friendship, love, and the practice of poetry.
Example (from "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats):
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
Iambic Pentameter:
A metrical pattern consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable, repeated five times in a row.
Example (from "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare):
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Idyll (Idyl):
Poetry that depicts a peaceful, idealized country scene or tells a story about heroes of a bygone age.
Example (from "Idylls of the King" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson):
The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story.
Irregular (Pseudo-Pindaric or Cowleyan) Ode:
A form characterized by irregularity of verse and structure, lacking correspondence between parts.
Example (from "Ode to the Confederate Dead" by Allen Tate):
Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element.
Italian Sonnet:
A sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern ABBAABBA followed by six lines with a rhyme pattern of CDECDE or CDCDCD.
Example (from "Sonnet 116" by William Shakespeare):
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Lay:
A long narrative poem, especially one sung by medieval minstrels.
Example (from "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" by Sir Walter Scott):
Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Limerick:
A short, humorous poem consisting of five lines with a specific rhyme and rhythm scheme.
Example:
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
List:
A poem made up of a list of items or events, which can be any length and may be rhymed or unrhymed.
Example (from "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot):
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Lyric:
A poem expressing the thoughts and feelings of the poet, often in musical and emotional language.
Example (from "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats):
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down.
Memoriam Stanza:
A quatrain in iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of ABBA, named after the pattern used by Lord Tennyson in "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Example:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Name:
Poetry that tells about the word, using the letters of the word for the first letter of each line.
Example (from "Love" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge):
Love, so alike the two sexes are,
That none of a partner may barrenly pine;
Yet they can't to a resemblance climb
From love, as from sun-light, so lofty and far,
But, arriving--they wander--and lose the design.
Narrative:
A poem that tells a story, often with characters, a plot, and a resolution.
Example (from "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe):
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ode:
A lengthy lyric poem typically of a serious or meditative nature, often praising something or someone.
Example (from "Ode to the West Wind" by Percy Bysshe Shelley):
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing...
Pastoral:
A poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, romanticized way, often focusing on shepherds and rustic landscapes.
Example (from "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe):
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove...
Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet:
A 14-line sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern ABBAABBA followed by a sestet of CDECDE or CDCDCD.
Example (from "Sonnet 292" by Petrarch):
A l'aura fredda, a la montagna, al rio,
A l'ombre, al sole, al fuoco, al piano, al monte,
Al prato verde, ove'l bel fior consente,
Al vago lume che 'l cor m'aperse...
Pindaric Ode:
A ceremonious poem consisting of a strophe (two or more lines repeated as a unit), followed by an antistrophe with the same metrical pattern, and concluding with a summary line (an epode) in a different meter.
Example (from "Ode to Joy" by Friedrich Schiller):
Joy, thou beauteous godly lighting,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire drunken we are ent'ring
Heavenly, thy holy home.
Quatrain:
A stanza or poem consisting of four lines, with lines 2 and 4 typically rhyming.
Example (from "The Tyger" by William Blake):
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Rhyme:
A rhyming poem has the repetition of the same or similar sounds of two or more words, often at the end of the line.
Example (from "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost):
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Rhyme Royal:
A type of poetry consisting of stanzas having seven lines in iambic pentameter, typically with a rhyme scheme of ABABBCC.
Example (from "Troilus and Criseyde" by Geoffrey Chaucer):
For Goddes love, as cheeseth you your way
Or whether ye the Troilus be or guyde,
Ne, if my wit may ought yow been aye,
Ne if my tale be wight or ill y-plyed,
Be ye the more or lesse herof affrayed;
But now, for love of Hem that is your trewe,
Sin that ye see I do hit for no repreve...
Romanticism:
A poem about nature and love while emphasizing the personal experience, often characterized by a focus on emotion and individualism.
Example (from "She Walks in Beauty" by Lord Byron):
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Rondeau:
A lyrical poem of French origin having 10 or 13 lines with two rhymes and with the opening phrase repeated twice as the refrain.
Example (from "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae):
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Senryu:
A short Japanese style poem, similar to haiku in structure, that treats human beings rather than nature, often in a humorous or satiric way.
Example:
Snowflakes fall,
Silence: a winter day
Without you
Sestina:
A poem consisting of six six-line stanzas (sestets) and a three-line envoy. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in varied order as end words in the other stanzas and also recur in the envoy.
Example (from "Sestina" by Elizabeth Bishop):
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
Shakespearean Sonnet:
A 14-line sonnet consisting of three quatrains of ABABCDCDEFEFGG, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. Shakespearean sonnets generally use iambic pentameter.
Example (from "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare):
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Shape:
Poetry written in the shape or form of an object, with the visual arrangement contributing to the overall meaning.
Example (from "Easter Wings" by George Herbert):
LORD, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
Sonnet:
A lyric poem that consists of 14 lines typically in iambic pentameter with one of several conventional rhyme schemes.
Example (from "How Do I Love Thee?" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning):
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
Tanka:
A Japanese poem of five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the other seven.
Example:
The summer night is short
where we are not alone—
a touch, a whisper,
love's soft melody plays on
in hearts that beat as one.
Terza Rima:
A type of poetry consisting of 10 or 11 syllable lines arranged in three-line tercets with an interlocking rhyme scheme (ABA BCB CDC, and so on), often used in longer poems such as Dante's "Divine Comedy."
Example (from "Ode to the West Wind" by Percy Bysshe Shelley):
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing...
Verse:
A single metrical line of poetry.
Example (from "Paradise Lost" by John Milton):
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
Villanelle:
A 19-line poem consisting of five tercets followed by a final quatrain, with a specific rhyme scheme (ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA) and the first and third lines of the first tercet repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza and then joined as the final two lines of the quatrain.
Example (from "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas):
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Types of Drama and Major Forms
Example
Comedy: A light-hearted drama intended to amuse the audience, often featuring misunderstandings and happy endings. Example: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare.
History: Plays based on historical events and figures, often dramatizing the lives of kings and national leaders. Example: "Henry V" by William Shakespeare.
Tragicomedy: A drama that combines elements of both tragedy and comedy. Example: "The Winter's Tale" by William Shakespeare.
Melodrama: A dramatic work that emphasizes plot over character development, often featuring sensational events and heightened emotions. Example: "The Octoroon" by Dion Boucicault.
Farce: A comedy that relies on exaggerated situations, physical humor, and improbable events. Example: "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde.
Types of Prose and Major Forms
Essay: A short piece of writing on a particular subject, often expressing the author's personal views. Example: "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Short Story: A brief fictional prose narrative that typically focuses on a single event or character. Example: "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.
Novella: A work of fiction that is shorter than a novel but longer than a short story. Example: "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka.
Biography: The written account of another person's life. Example: "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson.
Autobiography: The written account of the author's own life. Example: "The Story of My Life" by Helen Keller.
Memoir: A factual account of the author's personal experiences. Example: "Night" by Elie Wiesel.
Creative Nonfiction: A genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Example: "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot.
Types of Novels and Major Forms
Historical Novel: A novel set in a particular historical period, often with a focus on historical events. Example: "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy.
Science Fiction: A novel that explores futuristic concepts, advanced technology, and often extraterrestrial life. Example: "Dune" by Frank Herbert.
Fantasy: A novel that contains magical or supernatural elements set in imaginary worlds. Example: "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Mystery: A novel centered around solving a crime or uncovering secrets. Example: "The Hound of the Baskervilles" by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Romance: A novel that focuses on the romantic relationships between characters. Example: "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen.
Thriller: A novel characterized by excitement and suspense, often involving a crime or espionage. Example: "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson.
Bildungsroman: A coming-of-age novel that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist. Example: "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë.
Dystopian: A novel set in an imagined future where society is often oppressive and controlled. Example: "1984" by George Orwell.
Gothic: A novel characterized by mystery, horror, and the supernatural. Example: "Dracula" by Bram Stoker.
Satire: A novel that uses humor, irony, or ridicule to criticize and expose human vices or folly. Example: "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller.
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