Poems {antipoetry} can be in colloquial language about common life.
story poem {ballad poem}.
Poems {blank verse}| can use unrhymed iambic pentameter lines.
Poems {confessional poetry} can admit sin.
Poems {elegy}| can be melancholy contemplations or laments.
Short sentences {epigram}| can be solemn {Greek epigram} or witty {Roman epigram}.
Poetry {Gnomic poetry} can use aphorisms, maxims, and proverbs.
Poems {lyric poem} can express emotions or thoughts, with no story.
Poems {macaronic verse} can use several languages.
Poems {occasional verse} can be for common events.
Lyric poems {ode}| can be about serious themes, gods, or heroes. Odes {Pindaric ode} can have stanzas with strophe, anti-strophe, and epode and have lines with different lengths. Odes {Horatian ode} can have four-line stanzas about love, patriotism, and morals.
Poems {pastoral, poem} {bucolic, poem} can be about simple country life or about shepherds. Pastoral poems are often in Arcadia, mountainous region of Greece.
Poems {sonnet}| can have 14, 12, or 16 lines in iambic pentameter. Sonnets can use rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG {Shakespearean sonnet} {English sonnet} or ABBA ABBA CDE CDE {Petrarchan sonnet} {Italian sonnet}. Sonnets can be in series {sonnet sequence}.
Songs {hymn} can be about God, something sacred, or heroes.
Hymns {magnificat}| can praise God.
Hymns {psalm}| can be of praise.
Books {psalmody} can have psalms.
Narrative poems {epic poem} {heroic epic} can be about heroes in golden or mythical age, in serious and formal style and with allusions and figurative language. Epic poems begin with appeal to the Muses {invocation, poem}. Then the poet asks the Muses the epic question. Then narrative begins, often in media res, when the hero is at low point. Action continues from that point, with occasional flashbacks. Gods or magic can intervene {machinery, poem}.
style
Epic poems typically repeat stock epithets and line formulas.
types
Epic poems can feature trips to land of the dead. Epic poems can be for recitation before royalty {primary epic} {folk epic}. Epic poems can be for reading {secondary epic} {literary epic}.
In narrative poems, poet asks the Muses what began the action {epic question}|.
In narrative poems, narrative begins, often in story middle {in media res}, when hero is at low point.
Epic poems can be long comparisons {epic simile} {Homeric simile}.
Short epic poems {idyll}| {epyllion} can be pastoral in tone.
Short medieval tales or songs {lay} {lai} were about love and adventure.
Poems {narrative poem} can tell story.
Troubadours sang lyrics {aube} from a lady to her lover.
Three eight-line stanzas have rhyme scheme ABABBCBC, followed by four-line envoy with rhyme scheme BCBC {ballade poem}. 14th-century troubadours used ballade form.
Rhyming short love stories {Breton lay} can have mythology, chivalry, and magic. Chaucer adapted English Breton lays for The Canterbury Tales.
French songs {chanson de geste, French} can be about deeds.
Five eleven-line stanzas have rhyme scheme ABABCCDDEDE, followed by five-line envoy with rhyme scheme DDEDE {chant royal}.
Poems {chantefable} can have alternating verse and prose.
In medieval poetic forms {debat}, two characters disputed abstract topic.
Last stanzas {envoy, poem} can be farewells. Envoys typically dedicate poem to someone.
Poetry forms {French fixed form} can be similar to ballade: love song {canso}, debate {tenso}, intellectual debate {partimen} {joc parti}, satirical song {sirventes}, conversation between people separating at dawn {alba}, knight and female shepherd {pastorela}, and lament {planh}.
round {rondeau, poetry}.
Light verse {vers de societé} can use complicated rhyme scheme and sophisticated ideas.
Unrhymed poems {free verse} {vers libre} in fixed meter can have different line lengths.
19-line poems {villanelle} have five tercets, each followed by refrain, and one quatrain, followed by refrain. First-tercet first and third lines are refrain.
short sung funeral elegy {dirge}|.
Poems {eulogy}| can praise living or dead people.
Eulogies {monody, poetry} can be at funerals.
Eulogies {threnody} can be at funerals.
Ancient Greeks composed wild and emotional hymns {dithyramb} to Dionysius. Greek tragedy developed from dithyramb.
Poems or acrostics {abecedarius} can use alphabet.
Poem letters or lines can make patterns {acrostic}|.
Poetry {anacreonic poetry} can be about wine and women.
Poets can make poetic protests {complaint, poetry} to unresponsive opposite-sex people.
Poems {concrete poem} can describe images or shapes.
Poems {ditty} can be short informal humorous songs.
Humorous poems {doggerel} can use rhymed lines with odd stresses and irregular metrics.
Poem lines can form shape {emblematic poetry}.
Folk poems {flyting} can alternate abusive comments from two characters.
Lyrics {Goliardic verse} can be about wine and women in made-up Latin.
Mock-heroic poetry can use iambic-tetrameter couplets {Hudibrastic couplet}.
Poems {light verse} can be playful, comic, absurd, sophisticated, or witty, or have complicated rhyme scheme.
Humorous poems {limerick}| can use rhyme scheme AABBA, with third and fourth lines shorter than the others.
Light verse {nonsense verse} can use absurd words or ideas.
Poems {shape poem} can have different-length lines that form shapes.
Poems {canzone} {fronte} {sirma} similar to Italian sonnet can have several stanzas of 14 lines, followed by envoy.
florid style {marinismo}.
Poems {haiku}| can have three lines, with five, seven, and five syllables. Basho, Buson, Chiyo-ni, Chosu, Dansui, Etsujin, Issa, Kyorai, Oeharu, Shiki, Shisei-jo, Shusen, and Soseki used haiku form.
Japanese poem form {renga}.
Poems {tanka} can have five lines, with five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables. Tsurayuki used tanka form.
Japanese poem form {waka}.
Drinking songs {khamriyyat} can be about the wine boy {saqi}.
funny love lyrics {mudhakkarat} {mujuniyyat}.
Pastoral poems {eclogue} can be dialogue between shepherds or rural description.
chorus odes {epinicia}.
Catullus developed lyrics {epithalamion} for newlyweds.
Pastoral poems {georgic} can be about farming and farm work.
gypsy deep song {cante jondo}.
personal-life poems {carmina, poem}.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225