LESSON: READING AND WRITING POETRY

POETRY

 Poetry is defined as a literary form of art.

TYPES OF POETRY

Lyrical Poetry: short non-narrative poems that deal with personal feelings, moods and emotions and
can be adapted to music and sung.

 Sonnet: An iambic pentameter poem in fourteen lines which follows a very strict rhyme pattern

A. The Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet: It is divided into two main parts: The octave (the first eight
lines) and the sestet (the last six lines). The octave is rhymed a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a- and the sestet c-d-
ec-d-e- or c-d-c-d-c-d- for example John Keats's "On the Grasshopper and the Cricket"

B. The Shakespearean (English) Sonnet: It consists of three quatrains and a couplet. The poet
presents his subject in the three quatrains and gives the conclusion in the last couplet. The rhyme
scheme of this sonnet is usually a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-f-e-f-g-g- for example Shakespeare's "Sonnet
18"

 Ode: A poem of uniform stanzas which is intended to be sung and is written to glorify nature,
national events or great persons.
 Elegy a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.

Narrative Poetry: Poems which tell a story. They tend to be longer than other types of poetry, but it is
comparatively easy to recognize the poet's intention

 Epic is a long narrative poem written in an elevated language and dealing with wars, kings,
supernatural elements such as gods and demi-gods like The Iliad, The Odyssey, Beowulf and
Gilgamesh Epic.
 Ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music.

Dramatic Poetry: Plays written in verse instead of prose such as Shakespeare's plays.

 Dramatic monologue –is used when a character reveals his or her innermost thoughts and
feelings
 Soliloquy – the form of a speech or monologue spoken by a single character in a theatrical
play or drama
Some forms of Poetry:

 Haiku - Japanese poetry that consists of seventeen syllables and has nature as its subject or
theme. (5-7-5)

 Cinquain – five lines long with a certain number of syllables or words

 Tanaga – consisting of four lines with seven syllable

 Tanka – Japanese poetry that consists of 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-7)

 Acrostic poetry – the first letters of each line are aligned vertically to form a word
  Limericks – a funny little poem containing five lines

 Diona – a pre-Hispanic rhyming poem of three lines with seven syllables in each line expressing a complete
thought.

BASIC ELEMENTS OF POETRY

• Line – It’s not hard to understand what a line is in poetry. It’s similar to a sentence, except that
writers aren’t obliged to use periods to end each line. This functions as a natural pause to
signal a break in the flow. In most cases, this is considered to be a tool that controls the rhythm
of your piece.

• Stanza - Stanzas are basically the equivalent of a paragraph in an essay or short story. This is
composed of a series of lines that are grouped together to form the structure of a poem.

• Rhyme – referring to the repetition of a final syllable in different words

• Theme – This element is the general idea that a poet wants his or her readers to grasp.

• Imagery – plays a significant role in poetry. It is a figurative language used to represent a

• Symbolism – We find it difficult to portray how we truly feel through the mere use of words.
This is because the standard language we speak can never interpret our thoughts in a way
 that can make the people around us understand. So instead, we use symbols to give our
words the effect it needs.

• Meter - It is described by the number of feet in the poem.

METRICAL FEET

 Iamb: contains one unstressed and one stressed syllable.

 Trochee: contains one stressed and one unstressed syllable. 

 Spondee: contains two stressed syllables.

 Anapest: consists of three beats, two unstressed and one stressed.

 Dactyl: consists of three beats, one stressed and two unstressed. 

The other technical point that you need to know about is the way the lengths of lines of verse are
described. This is done according to the number of feet they contain, and the names given to different
lengths of lines are as follows:

Monometer a line of one foot

Dimeter a line of two feet

Trimeter a line of three feet

Tetrameter a line of four feet

Pentameter a line of five feet

Hexameter a line of six feet

Heptameter a line of seven feet

Octameter a line of eight feet

 Iambic rhythm is in fact the basic sound pattern in ordinary English speech. If you say the
following line aloud you will hear what I mean:
The next most common foot is the trochee, a stressed syllable (or beat) followed by an unstressed
one (/x), as in the word

Both the iamb and the trochee have two syllables, the iamb being a ‘rising’ rhythm and the trochee a
‘falling’ rhythm. Another two-syllable foot known as the spondee has two equally stressed beats (/ /),
as in

Other important feet have three syllables. The most common are the anapest (x x /) and the dactyl (/
x x), which are triple rhythms, rising and falling respectively, as in the words