“'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!”
~From 'Growing Old' by Matthew Arnold
Do you see a poet in yourself sometimes? Are you looking to explore more into the topic so you can find out your inner poet? Why not start with what poetry actually is and what are some of its types? It might help you pick a starting point so you can fulfil your dream of writing verses.
Poetry
Originated from the Medieval Latin word poeta, meaning poet, poetry is a literary work in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.
Types of Poetry
Poetry is not limited to a single way of writing as the most diverse nature of the poets requires them to express their thoughts not only through a spell of words but also through an enchanted styles. The type of poetry one choses not only defines his mind processes but also the depth and complexity of the topic. There are various poetry styles which are discussed below.
Quickly navigate through the various forms.
Acrostic is a type of poetry in which the poet uses a careful set of words at the beginning or the end of each sentence in such a way that the letters in a line form a specific phrase or verb. The easiest way to write an acrostic poem is when the first letters of each line spell out a word whereas the most difficult and rarest acrostic poem is where the word is formed with the last letter of the last word in each verse.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote the beautiful acrostic in the name of 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,
Breathe it less gently forth — and veil thine eyes.
Endymion, recollect, when Luna tried
To cure his love — was cured of all beside —
His folly — pride — and passion — for he died.”
A ballad poem is a narrative of the poet which tells a story in a rhythmic scheme ABAB and arranged in quatrains. Ballads were used as folk songs in the history and their rhyme make them typical modern music. A poetic story told in a ballad is usually a love story. Ballads are often long depending on the story told and poet’s concern.
William Shakespeare’s ballad poem “All the World’s a Stage” compares the world to a stage and life to a play, and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life to the seven acts of a play.
"Ballata 5" by Guido Cavalcanti highlights the form and voice of the standard ballad of today:
"That which befalls me in my Lady's presence
Bars explanation intellectual.
I seem to see a lady wonderful
Spring forth between her lips, one whom no sense
Can fully tell the mind of,and one whence
Another, in beauty, springeth marvelous,
From whom a star goes forth and speaketh thus:
'Now my salvation is gone forth from thee.'"
A French form of poem that includes twenty lines of no set lengths and is split into three octaves i.e. eight-lined stanzas and one quatrain i.e. four-lined stanza, making a total of 4 stanzas.
A ballade poem is a French form poem, (not to be confused with the "ballad" form, which we offer a separate workshop for!). A ballade has twenty-eight lines of no set length. It is split into three octaves (eight-lined stanzas) and one quatrain (a four-lined stanza), resulting in 4 stanzas in total. All stanzas end with the same one line refrain and uses a particular rhyme scheme. The first three octaves have a rhyme scheme of a, b, a, b, b, c, b, C, whereas the rhyme scheme of the quatrain is b, c, b, C. Ballade is difficult to write in English than in French and some famous ballade poets of English inlcude Geoffrey Chaucer, Andrew Lang, G K Chesterton and Wendy Cope.
A well-known ballade by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Down by the flash of the restless water (a)
The dim White Ship like a white bird lay; (b)
Laughing at life and the world they sought her, (a)
And out she swung to the silvering bay. (b)
Then off they flew on their roystering way, (b)
And the keen moon fired the light foam flying (c)
Up from the flood where the faint stars play, (b)
And the bones of the brave in the wave are lying. (C)
'Twas a king's fair son with a king's fair daughter, (a)
And full three hundred beside, they say, - (b)
Revelling on for the lone, cold slaughter (a)
So soon to seize them and hide them for aye; (b)
But they danced and they drank and their souls grew gay, (b)
Nor ever they knew of a ghoul's eye spying (c)
Their splendor a flickering phantom to stray (b)
Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying. (C)
Through the mist of a drunken dream they brought her (a)
(This wild white bird) for the sea-fiend's prey: (b)
The pitiless reef in his hard clutch caught her, (a)
And hurled her down where the dead men stay. (b)
A torturing silence of wan dismay - (b)
Shrieks and curses of mad souls dying - (c)
Then down they sank to slumber and sway (b)
Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying. (C)
Prince, do you sleep to the sound alway (b)
Of the mournful surge and the sea-birds' crying? - (c)
Or does love still shudder and steel still slay, (b)
Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying? (C)
A poem that has no rhyme but has an iambic pentameter which means it contains lines of five feet (each foot representing an iambic) and has two syllables, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. It has no fixed number of lines and is often used in descriptive poems, reflective poems and dramatic monologues
Below is ‘Mending Walls’ by Robert Frost which is an example of a Blank verse poem.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;”
Note that this poem has no rhyme scheme and follows iambic pentameter. The stressed syllables are marked in bold.
A cinquain poem consists of five un-rhyming lines forming a verse. It was first created by Adelaide Crapsey as an inspiration from Japanese haiku. Each line in a cinquain has a set number of syllables i.e. line 1: one syllable (title), line 2: two words describing the title, line 3: three words relating the action, line 4: four words expressing the feelings, and line 5: one word recalling the title.
Jan Allen wrote this beautiful cinquain titled “Flying High” quoted below:
“Soaring
Free as a bird
No wings to restrain us
Blown gently on salmon pink clouds
Heaven!”
The poetry style that constitutes 7 lines written in the form of a diamond is known as diamante. The first diamante was written by Iris Tiedt in 1969 with the title of ‘The Diamante’. A diamante can be written for two purposes; either to compare and contrast two different subjects or to name synonyms at the beginning of the poem and antonyms at the other half of the poem. The structure of the poem is as follows:
Line 1: Beginning subject
Line 2: Two describing words about line 1
Line 3: Three doing words about line 1
Line 4: A short phrase about line 1, a short phrase about line 7
Line 5: Three doing words about line 7
Line 6: Two describing words about line 7
Line 7: End subject
A. L. Andresen wrote ‘Angels’ as a diamante poem.
Angels
love, mystery
beautiful, bright, caring
peaceful, spiritual, messengers, guardian angels
powerful, sparkling, presence
hope, longing
death
Maurice Scève gave this kind of poem his own mark with the lyrical romantic assembly of 449 French poems of Délie, but other poets, also English, have employed the dizain. Like the name says, 10 is crucial in it. The poem has one 10-line stanza, with 10 syllables per line, and with the rhyme scheme: ababbccdcd (the first 5 mirrored in the second 5). On top of that Scève devided each line in 4 and 6 syllables, giving it a structured flow.
Here's an example Dizain poem written by Dutch poet Ludy Bührs:
How do I pull myself up from darkness,
where is the light, will my eyes find a hold?
My cold hand is but searching, baseless
without its fit, it slides in my shade’s mold
and it reaches just to find an untold
empty space of uselessness, gruesome void.
No place to stay, drifting like an asteroid
how much is left of me then, who am I?
The night takes long, no second to avoid,
my life’s flushed, in hollow strokes goes by.
A poem of mourning or reflection on the death of an individual.
A long, solemn poem that is written in narrative of the poet or another person who is telling some story about heroic figures or significant cultural events is an epic poem. Before the development of writing, epic poems were memorized and played an important part in maintaining a record of the great deeds and history of a culture. Some great epic poems of history include Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, and Beowulf.
An epigram is a short satirical, ironic and a witty piece written sometimes as a couplet or a quatrain but mostly as a single line phrase. It is brief, forceful remark with a funny twist at the end. The term epigram was derived from the Greek word ‘epi-gramma’ meaning inscription or to inscribe which referred to the inscriptions written on stone monuments in ancient Greece. The subject of epigram is a single event or a thought. The epigram flourished in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England thanks to John Donne, Robert Herrick, Ben Jonson, Alexander Pope, Lord George Byron, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In France, the poet Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux and the philosopher Voltaire often employed the epigrammatic form.
Coleridge defined epigram in the form of an epigram:
“What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.”
Oscar Wilde’s famous epigram:
"I can resist everything except temptation"
Free verse is a poem which has no rhyme, meter, or other traditional poetry technique. Lack of predetermined form, makes free verse take on unique shapes and characteristics. Essentially, free verse allows poets to take control of the poem as he is allowed more control over expression, meters, rhythm, rhymes, and other poetic techniques. This can allow for more spontaneity and individualization.
Robert Frost said about writing free verse, “Playing tennis without a net.” There are many examples of famous free verses written and Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Light Keeper’ is one of them.
“The brilliant kernel of the night,
The flaming lightroom circles me:
I sit within a blaze of light
Held high above the dusky sea.
Far off the surf doth break and roar
Along bleak miles of moonlit shore,
Where through the tides the tumbling wave
Falls in an avalanche of foam
And drives its churned waters home
Up many an undercliff and cave.”
The most famous type of Japanese poetry that was first known as ‘hokku’, but now called haiku as the abbreviation of the phrase "haikai no ku" which means a verse of haikai. In English, haiku is generally written in three lines to equate to the three parts of a haiku in Japanese that consists of five, seven and then five on as the Japanese count sounds, not syllables. Punctuations such as comma, colon, ellipses, etc. are generally used at the end of the first or second line and very rarely found in the middle of the second line. The purpose is to create a relationship between the two parts. A Haiku poem is similar to a Tanka but has fewer lines and can be written on topics ranging from nature to love. A Haiku consists of 3 lines and 17 syllables. Each line has a set number of syllables see below:
Line 1 – 5 syllables
Line 2 – 7 syllables
Line 3 – 5 syllables
Matsuo Bashō wrote these haiku poems. Note that number of lines, syllables and punctuation:
“From time to time,
The clouds give rest
To the moon-beholders.”
“The old pond—
A frog jumps in,
Aound of water.”
Named after its creator, the Latin poet Horace, Horatian ode is a type of poetry that comprise of two or four-line stanzas. In contrast to the lofty, heroic odes of the Greek poet Pindar, most of Horace’s odes are intimate and reflective; they are often addressed to a friend and deal with friendship, love, and the practice of poetry. A Horatian ode is a poem with meter and rhyme. It is devoted to praising a person, animal or object.
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote an astounding Horatian ode called “Ode to the West Wind”. An excerpt from it is down below.
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,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
A two word phrase that describes an object by the use of metaphors is called a kenning. The use of kennings in a poem which makes up a riddle describing someone or something is called a kennings poem. A kenning is a much-compressed form of metaphor, originally used in Anglo-Saxon and Norse poetry. A Kennings poem consists of several stanzas of two describing words. It can be made up of any number of Kennings. Judith Nicholls' 'Bluebottle' uses kennings as part of a larger poem, that is itself a riddle; Andrew Fusek Peters and Polly Peters go further, building a pair of poems both consisting entirely of kennings.
Polly Peters’ “Mum” is an example of kennings poem;
She’s a:
Sadness Stealer
Cut-knee healer
Hug-me-tighter
Wrongness righter
Gold star carer
Chocolate sharer (well, sometimes)
Hamster feeder
Bedtime reader
Great time player
Night fear slayer
Treat dispenser
Naughty sensor (how come she always knows)
She’s my
Never glum,
Constant chum
Second to none
We’re under her thumb!
Mum!
A Kyrielle is a French form of rhyming poetry written in quatrains (a stanza consisting of 4 lines), and each quatrain contains a repeating line or phrase as a refrain (usually appearing as the last line of each stanza). Each line within the poem consists of only eight syllables. There is no limit to the amount of stanzas a Kyrielle may have, but three is considered the accepted minimum. Some popular rhyming schemes for a Kyrielle are: aabB, ccbB, ddbB, with B being the repeated line, or abaB, cbcB, dbdB. Mixing up the rhyme scheme is possible for an unusual pattern of: axaZ, bxbZ, cxcZ, dxdZ, etc. with Z being the repeated line. The rhyme pattern is completely up to the poet.
‘Beyond Mere Mind’ by James Dean Chase is an example of kyrielle with the set structure of aabB, ccbB, ddbB, eebB.
“A blue-white light appeared to me
at the innocent age of three.
Guiding me strongly, yet so kind,
beyond horizons of mere mind.
Given choices, each step I took,
good would tingle and evil shook.
Some paths in life, perhaps, would wind
beyond horizons of mere mind.
At times, I stumbled into pits,
drowning in darkness - causing fits.
Again, I'd see that blue-white find
beyond horizons of mere mind.
As long as I have energy,
onward, I go, on Life's journey.
Spirit, nothing will ever bind,
beyond horizons of mere mind.”
A short, humorous, witty, sometimes uncouth, five line poem that is written in a distinctive rhythm. The first, second and fifth lines, the longer lines (7-10 syllables), rhyme. The third and fourth shorter lines (5-7 syllables) rhyme. It has a rhyme scheme of A-A-B-B-A. Limericks are very light hearted poems and can sometimes be utter nonsense. They are great for kids to both read and write as they are short and funny. The first line of a limerick poem usually begins with 'There was a....' and ends with a name, person or place. The last line of a limerick is normally a little farfetched or unusual.
The famous poet Edward Lear wrote a witty Limerick poem as under;
“'There was an old man with a beard
Who said, 'It is just as I feared,
Two owls and a hen
A lark and a wren
Have all built their nests in my beard!'”
Lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. The term derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, the lyric, which was defined by its musical accompaniment, usually on a stringed instrument known as a lyre. In some cases, the form and theme of a lyric poem are inter wed. However, it is just as common for the form and theme to be opposites, which brings the readers interest on whether the poet can successfully bridge a union between the two. Lyric poetry is made of two main types: elegy and ode.
A serious or thoughtful poem, usually with a formal structure. This type of poem is generally seen as a way to pay homage to a thing or person. This type of lyric is the most popular and includes the sub-genre of sonnets.
T. S. Eliot wrote ‘Lyric’ as a lyric poem;
“If Time and Space, as Sages say,
Are things which cannot be,
The sun which does not feel decay
No greater is than we.
So why, Love, should we ever pray
To live a century?
The butterfly that lives a day
Has lived eternity.
The flowers I gave thee when the dew
Was trembling on the vine,
Were withered ere the wild bee flew
To suck the eglantine.
So let us haste to pluck anew
Nor mourn to see them pine,
And though our days of love be few
Yet let them be divine.”
The pantoum is a poetic form derived from the pantun, a Malay verse form from the pantun berkait, a series of interwoven quatrains. A Pantoum is a type of poem with a verse form consisting of three stanzas. It has a set pattern within the poem of repetitive lines. The pattern in each stanza is where the second and fourth line of each verse is repeated as the first and third of the next. The pattern changes though for the last stanza to the first and third line are the second and fourth of the stanza above (penultimate). The last line is a repeat of the first starting line of the poem and the third line of the first is the second of the last.
American poets such as John Ashbery, Marilyn Hacker, Donald Justice ("Pantoum of the Great Depression"), Carolyn Kizer, and David Trinidad have done work in this form, as has Irish poet Caitriona O'Reilly. Stuart Dischell published a well-received pantoum, "She Put on Her Lipstick in the Dark," in the December, 2007 issue of The Atlantic.
The December 2015 issue of First Things featured a pantoum by James Matthew Wilson, "The Christmas Preface" given below:
There, in the hay’s warmth and the steaming sty,
The Word born to the frailty of flesh
Cracks our mortality with a weak cry
And seals our life within his endlessness.
The Word born to the frailty of flesh,
He lies wrapped in the cloths of mystery,
And seals our life within his endlessness,
In infant finitude eternity.
He lies wrapped in the cloths of mystery,
The straining of small limbs, unopened eyes.
In infant finitude, eternity
And love invisible we recognize.
The straining of small limbs, unopened eyes
Draw us from torchlight to the light of glory,
And love invisible we recognize
Shaping the child’s dream of the Christmas story.
Draw us from torchlight to the light of glory.
Crack our mortality with a weak cry,
Shaping the child’s dream of the Christmas story,
Here in the hay’s warmth and the steaming sty.
Pindaric ode, ceremonious poem by or in the manner of Pindar, a Greek professional lyrist of the 5th century B.C. Pindar employed the triadic structure attributed to Stesichorus, consisting of a strophe (two or more lines repeated as a unit) followed by a metrically harmonious antistrophe, concluding with a summary line in a different meter. These three parts corresponded to the movement of the chorus to one side of the stage, then to the other, and their pause mid-stage to deliver the epode. The collection of four books of Epinician odes influenced poets of the Western world since their publication by Aldus Manutius in 1513. They reveal Pindar’s sense of vocation as a poet dedicated to preserving and interpreting great deeds and their divine values. The metaphors, myths, and gnomic sayings that ornament the odes are often difficult to grasp because of the rapid shifts of thought and the sacrifice of syntax to achieving uniform poetic color.
Based on an extract from 'The Progress of Poesy' by Thomas Gray
(a) Wake up, you little sleep head, awake
(a) And give great joy to life that's found in dreams
(b) From Nature's most sweet sounding streams
(a) A thousand turns their twisty journeys take
(a) The dancing flowers, that above them blow
(c) Breathe life and music as they flow
(d) Now the vast waves of sound drift along
(d) Deep, beautiful, vast and strong
(e) Through the fields and vales and valleys they glide
(e) And rolling down the mountain side
(f) Daring and carefree the water pours
(f) From the highest edge they jump and falling, they roar.
Renga, meaning “linked poem," began over seven hundred years ago in Japan to encourage the collaborative composition of poems. Poets worked in pairs or small groups, taking turns composing the alternating three-line and two-line stanzas. To create a renga, one poet writes the first stanza, which is three lines long with a total of seventeen syllables. The next poet adds the second stanza, a couplet with seven syllables per line. The third stanza repeats the structure of the first and the fourth repeats the second, alternating in this pattern until the poem’s end. The language is often pastoral, incorporating words and images associated with seasons, nature, and love. In order for the poem to achieve its trajectory, each poet writes a new stanza that leaps from only the stanza preceding it.
An excerpt from “A Hundred Stanzas by Three Poets at Minase
Despite some snow
the base of the hills spreads with haze
the twilight scene
Despite some snow
the base of the hills spreads with haze
the twilight scene
where the waters flow afar
the village glows with sweet plumb flowers
Where the waters flow afar
the village glows with sweet plumb flowers
in the river wind
a single stand of willow trees
show spring color
In the river wind
a single stand of willow trees
show spring color
day break comes on distinctly
with sounds of punted boat”
A lyrical poem of French origin having 10 or 13 lines with two rhymes and with the opening phrase repeated twice as the refrain is called a rondeau poem. It is a short poem consisting of fifteen lines that have two rhymes throughout. The rondeau began as a lyric form in thirteenth-century France, popular among medieval court poets and musicians. Named after the French word for “round," the rondeau is characterized by the repeating lines of the rentrement, or refrain, and the two rhyme sounds throughout. The challenge of writing a rondeau is finding an opening line worth repeating and choosing two rhyme sounds that offer enough word choices.
An example of a solemn rondeau is the Canadian army physician John McCrae’s 1915 wartime poem, "In Flanders Fields":
“In Flanders fields the poppies grow
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.
We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
Poetry written in the shape or form of an object that it describes. This is a type of concrete poetry. It could be a circle-shaped poem describing a cookie, or a poem about love shaped like a heart.
Below is an example of a shape poem called ‘Spring Bud’ written by Ernesto P. Santiago:
My
breath
shivers under
a rug of loneliness,
a sleepy heart huddles
against such memories
of togetherness and not of
goodbyes, hating to disperse
the fiery rhymes of your lips,
as well as the warmth of its
sweat...tastes like red wine,
then it beats...and beats
gently, as it envisions
you, in an early
i
n
g
An Italian style of poetry, credited mainly to Giacomo Da Lentini, sonnet is a poem of an expressive thought or idea made up of 14 lines, each being 10 syllables long. Its rhymes are arranged according to one of the schemes, where eight lines called an octave consisting of two quatrains which normally open the poem as the question are followed by six lines called a sestet that are the answer, or the more common English which is three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet. The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto (from Old Provençal sonet a little poem, from son song, from Latin sonus a sound).The structure of a typical English sonnet is ab ab, cdcd, efef, gg.
Famous writers and poets like Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe have contributed a lot in the field of sonnets. Poe’s sonnet ‘Sonet I’ from Sir John Suckling is quoted below:
“There are some qualities- some incorporate things,
That have a double life, which thus is made
A type of that twin entity which springs
From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.
There is a two-fold Silence- sea and shore-
Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces,
Some human memories and tearful lore,
Render him terrorless: his name's "No More."
He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!
No power hath he of evil in himself;
But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)
Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
No foot of man,) commend thyself to God!”
The Japanese tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as “short song," and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form. The poem has five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the other seven. Also called waka or uta, tanka poem is similar to a haiku but has two additional lines. In many ways, the tanka resembles the sonnet, certainly in terms of treatment of subject. Like the sonnet, the tanka employs a turn, known as a pivotal image, which marks the transition from the examination of an image to the examination of the personal response.
Amy Lowell wrote this Tanka poem
Roses and larkspur
And slender, serried lilies;
I wonder whether
These are worth your attention.
Consider it, and if not—
A terza rima is an Italian form of poetry first used by Dante Alighieri. A type of poetry consisting of 10 or 11 syllable lines arranged in three-line tercets usually in iambic pentameter. It follows an interlocking rhyming scheme, or chain rhyme. This is where the middle of each stanza rhymes with the first and last line of the following stanza. There is no set length to this form, as long as it follows the pattern as follows:
ABA
BCB
CDC
DED
With the last stanza as a couplet rhyming with the middle line of the previous stanza.
‘The Eagle’ was a tercet written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92):
“He clasps the crag with crooked hands:
Close to the sun it lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, it stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.”
Nicholas Breton, demonstrated the tercet’s flexibility as a triplet, as well as the beautiful musicality of the form ‘Country Song’:
“Shall we go dance the hay, the hay?
Never pipe could ever play
Better shepherd’s roundelay.
Shall we go sing the song, the song?
Never Love did ever wrong,
Fair maids, hold hands all along.
Shall we go learn to woo, to woo?
Never thought ever came to,
Better deed could better do.
Shall we go learn to kiss, to kiss?
Never heart could ever miss
Comfort, where true meaning is.
Thus at base they run, they run.
When the sport was scarce begun.
But I waked–and all was done.”
Tetractys, a poetic form invented by Ray Stebbing, consists of at least 5 lines of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 syllables (total of 20). Tetractys can be written with more than one verse, but must follow suit with an inverted syllable count. Tetractys can also bereversed and written 10, 4, 3, 2, 1.
"Euclid, the mathematician of classical times, considered the number series 1, 2, 3, 4 to have mystical significance because its sum is 10, so he dignified it with a name of its own - Tetractys. The tetractys could be Britain's answer to the haiku. Its challenge is to express a complete thought, profound or comic, witty or wise, within the narrow compass of twenty syllables." - Ray Stebbing.
Shani Fassbender wrote ‘Dust’ as a Tetractys:
“Dust
airborne
can settle
everywhere
It lands on tables and under your bed
It also clings to your computer screen
on clothes it goes
and of course
up your
nose
Pets
people
in your food
not in the mood
In the air, everywhere, I don’t care
You can have it mop, cloth, feather duster
I don’t want it
here or there
not one
bit
So
go clean
all over
dust if you must
Scratch me a note of “clean me” on my shelf
If I dust today it will just come back
everywhere
it settles
in my
home”
A stanza poem of eight lines. Its rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB and often all lines are in iambic tetrameter: the first, fourth and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines, thereby making the initial and final couplets identical as well. A triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, another French verse form emphasizing repetition and rhyme. Some of the earliest known triolets composed in English were written by Patrick Cary, briefly a Benedictine at Douai, who purportedly used them in his devotions. British poet Robert Bridges reintroduced the triolet to the English language, where it enjoyed a brief popularity among late-nineteenth-century British poets.
Thomas Hardy wrote a beautiful triolet called ‘Birds at Winter’:
“Around the house the flakes fly faster,
And all the berries now are gone
From holly and cotoneaster
Around the house. The flakes fly! – faster
Shutting indoors the crumb-outcaster
We used to see upon the lawn
Around the house. The Flakes fly faster
And all the berries now are gone!”
Notice how in the last line the punctuation is altered; this is common although not strictly in keeping with the original form. Furthermore, the fact that the 'berries now are gone' has a new relevance; the birds are going unfed.
A Tyburn Poem is a six-line poetic form where the first four lines consist of just a single, two syllabled word each that all rhyme. Line 5 has nine syllables, with the fifth to eighth syllables using the words from lines 1 and 2. Line 6 also has nine syllables, with the fifth to eighth syllables using the words from lines 3 and 4. The first four lines rhyme and are all descriptive words. The last two lines rhyme and incorporate the first, second, third, and fourth lines as the 5th through 8th syllables.
Below is “The Dog and His Master” written by Anne Kingsmill Finch.
“NO better Dog e'er kept his Master's Door
Than honest Snarl, who spar'd nor Rich nor Poor;
But gave the Alarm, when any one drew nigh,
Nor let pretended Friends pass fearless by:
For which reprov'd, as better Fed than Taught,
He rightly thus expostulates the Fault.
To keep the House from Rascals was my Charge;
The Task was great, and the Commission large.
Nor did your Worship e'er declare your Mind,
That to the begging Crew it was confin'd;
Who shrink an Arm, or prop an able Knee,
Or turn up Eyes, till they're not seen, nor see.
To Thieves, who know the Penalty of Stealth,
And fairly stake their Necks against your Wealth,
These are the known Delinquents of the Times,
And Whips and Tyburn.
testify their Crimes.
But since to Me there was by Nature lent
An exquisite Discerning by the Scent;
I trace a Flatt'rer, when he fawns and leers,
A rallying Wit, when he commends and jeers:
The greedy Parasite I grudging note,
Who praises the good Bits, that oil his Throat;
I mark the Lady, you so fondly toast,
That plays your Gold, when all her own is lost:
The Knave, who fences your Estate by Law,
Yet still reserves an undermining Flaw.
These and a thousand more, which I cou'd tell,
Provoke my Growling, and offend my Smell”
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