Playing with a Poetic Form

Traditional* Forms of Poetry

Write 15 or more lines of traditional formal poetry in your notebook.

Sestina

Length: 39 lines (six six-line stanzas with a final stanza of three lines)

Rhyme scheme: none

Rhythm: varied

Other: Give a number to the word that comes at the end of each line in the first stanza: 1 then 2 then 3 then 4 then 5 then 6. Then the words ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243. (In other words the line that ended the sixth line in the first stanza now ends the first line in the second stanza, etc.) Then follow this line ending patter: 364125, then 532614, then 451362, and finally 246531. These six words then appear in the final tercet as well, with the tercet's first line usually containing 1 and 2, its second 3 and 4, and its third 5 and 6.

Italian Sonnet (in English)

Length: 14 lines

Rhyme scheme: ABBAABBA CDECDE

Meter (rhythm): iambic pentameter

Other: volta (shift) at line nine

English Sonnet

Length: 14 lines

Rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

Rhythm: iambic pentameter

Other: volta at line nine, couplet provides closure or resolution or twist.

Ballad

Length: varies

Rhyme scheme: usually ABCB

Rhythm: four-beat line followed by three-beat line, etc. (Beat=stressed syllable)

Other: ballads tell a story

Villanelle

Length: nineteen lines

Rhyme scheme: ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA

Rhythm: usually tetrameter or pentameter

Other: The first and third line in the first stanza are repeated in several places. The first line is repeated at the end of the second and forth stanzas and in the third line of the last stanza. The third line is repeated at the end of the third and fifth stanzas and in the very last line of the poem. Here’s the scheme: A1bA2  abA1  abA2  abA1 abA2 abA1A2.

Limerick

Length: five lines

Rhyme scheme: AABBA

Rhythm:

anapestic (unstressed, unstressed, stressed syllables: da, da, DUM)

or amphibrachic (unstressed, stressed, unstressed syllables trimeter: da, DUM, da)

with three stressed syllables in lines 1, 2, and 5; and

two stressed syllables in lines 3 and 4.

Other: Limerick’s are usually playful, often absurd.

Haiku

Length: three lines

Rhyme scheme: none

Rhythm: five syllable, seven syllables, five syllables

Other: traditional haiku refer to the seasons directly or indirectly (kigo), and include a “cutting word,” a break in the text (kireji).

Tanka is a variation with the following syllable pattern: 5-7-5-7-7.

Renga is linked “tanka” 5-7-5, 7-7; 5-7-5, 7-7; etc.; finishing with an additional 7-7.

Next…

Create your own form (with at least three constraints that you write out) and write a poem or poems of fifteen or more lines using that form.

Less Traditional Poetic forms that might help you create your own form

Acrostic variations: end-acrostic, double acrostic, mesostic

Anaphora (repetition of line or sentence beginnings), epistrophe (repetition of line or sentence endings)

Kerouac’s book of blues: one page poem

Olson’s projective verse (composition by field): treat the page like a musical score and/or artist’s canvas

Oulipo Experiments:

N+7: where each substantive or noun in a given text, such as a poem, is systematically replaced by the noun to be found seven places away in a chosen dictionary.

George Perec’s La Disparition (A Void in English): no words in the work include the letter “e”