Poetry ~ Part 2
Hello, readers! If you haven’t noticed already, I tend to write my articles in very long series, and this is not an exception. Today’s article is the second part to my series of types of poetry. Please do read the previous one before beginning this article.
Lyric Poetry
This is a very wide group of poetry and includes other forms of poetry such as sonnets, songs, narrative poems, and even haiku in some instances. This type of poem is described as a type of poetry that expresses emotions and personal thoughts. It is usually written from the first-person perspective. When I thought about the definition for lyric poetry, I immediately thought about some poems by Emily Dickinson. So below is a poem by Emily Dickinson that conveys her emotions alongside being written in the first person.
Chartless
By Emily Dickinson
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet now I know how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in Heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
Limericks
Limericks are extremely fun and easy to write. A limerick is basically a five-line poem with a rhyme scheme of aabba. Limericks are usually about lighthearted and nonsensical themes which matches its sprightly rhyme scheme. The example below is the only limerick written by Rudyard Kipling that was ever found. You can see that this poem is not serious at all especially from the made-up word at the end of line three and the strange grammar at the end of line four. Also, most limericks don’t have titles, but the one below just happens to have one. Pay attention to the rhyme scheme as well.
There Was A Small Boy of Quebec
By Rudyard Kipling
A THERE was a small boy of Quebec,
A Who was buried in snow to his neck;
B When they said. "Are you friz?"
B He replied, "Yes, I is—
A But we don't call this cold in Quebec."
Haiku
Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry and is usually about nature. It is unrhymed and has three lines. The first line has five syllables, the second has seven syllables, and the third has five lines. One notable writer of haiku is Matsuo Basho (I didn’t include the accents in his name). He was a former samurai who lived in the 17th century. The haiku below is a section from a longer work entitled The Narrow Road to the Deep North or The Narrow Road to the Interior. The selection below probably makes no sense, but I put it there as an example of the syllables. The work’s Japanese name is below and I also included the Japanese translation of the haiku. It is interesting to note that even the Japanese translation follows the correct number of syllables.
Oku no Hosomichi
kusa no to mo Even a thatched hut
sumikawaru yo zo May change with a new owner
hina no ie Into a doll’s house.
Cinquains
The cinquain is another type of poem that relies on syllables, This type of poem has five lines and the syllables are as follows.
- 1st: two syllables
- 2nd: four syllables
- 3rd: six syllables
- 4th: eight syllables
- 5th: two syllables
Adelaide Crapsey is a prominent writer of cinquains as she invented them and included twenty-eight of them inside her book Verse. Here’s one of her cinquains below and again take note of the syllables:
The Warning
By Adelaide Crapsey
Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk . . . as strange, as still . . .
A white moth flew . . . Why am I grown
So cold?
Figure Poems
This is more of an artistic thing. The figure poem is just like any other poem except for the fact that it is arranged so that the whole image of the poem corresponds with the topic of the poem. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, look below at the example.
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Free Verse
Free verse (not to be confused with blank verse) is a type of unrhymed poetry that follow the cadences of speech. It is a conversational type of poetry. The example below might not make any sense to you either and the grammatical errors are the author’s own work.
The Coming of Archy
By Don Marquis
From archy and mehitabel, 1927
dont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i haven’t had a crumb of bread for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste and leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archy
Blank Verse
Blank verse is defined as “unrhymed iambic pentameter (Anderson, 161).” Everyone probably knows what unrhymed means already. Iambic is a type of foot, the pattern of a line of poetry (Anderson, 161) that has an unstressed syllable and then a stressed syllable. Pentameter contains five meters of foot. If that didn’t make sense, I’ll try to use the example below:
1 2 3 4 5
The land/ was ours/ before/ we were/ the land's.
In the example above, the divisions signify meter, a poem's rhythm (Anderson, 161). Since this is iambic meter, each unstressed syllable and stressed syllable make up one meter. This line has five meters which shows that this poem possesses pentameter. The unstressed syllable (The, was, be, we, the) goes first in this iambic poem, and the stressed (land, ours, fore, were, land’s) comes after. This type of poetry is used for more serious topics. I’m closing the article with a poem by Robert Frost that illustrates blank verse. This poem describes America and is one of his most well-known poems. Come back next week for a miscellaneous article.
The Gift Outright
By Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
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