DEFINITION
A poem that tells a story
EXAMPLE
Sitting in a treeHe waits silently
Slowly breathe, draw an arrow
Catch a meal for tomorrow
Bring home meat, feed them today
His family is week, in disarray
He eyes grow weary, mind goes dark
His skin is irritated against the bark
A figure moves within the brush
His arrow flies, a wooden rush
His eyes go blank, his mind a swirl
For his arrow found a little girl...
★ Ballads
DEFINITION
A songlike poem that tells a story about lost love, betrayal or death which uses simple language, refrains [repetition] and sometimes hyperbole [exaggeration.].
EXAMPLE
Standing on one side of the bridgeYou on the other
Burned at both ends
of the times we spent with one another
As the bridge slowly crumbles apart
A melody starts to play
The Ballad of the Broken Heart
Reminiscing of a secret love affair
Wallowing in the pits of despair
This isn't the ending
Its a brand new start
As a melody begins to play
The Ballad of the Broken Heart
For a wounded heart time does not heal
Only gives it a better conceal
In the beginning like a flower our love arose
To end this chapter
The book will close
From within, the music will start
Hail! Sing, sing aloud the melody
The Ballad of the Broken Heart
★ Epic
DEFINITION
A long poem that tells a story of a hero which uses elegant language.
EXAMPLE
In a corner of the worldThere was a land called Sumer
Whose waters once reached...
The Euphrates valley and the
Syrian desert, its high plateau,
As a result, the mud of two northern streams
Created a delta, with a pitiless sun
But rich was the soil, as anywhere
On earth...and God created man
And man here made his home:
This was the beginning, diversified
By marshes and reed-beds,
Rivers flush with their banks...
After the Great Flood, retreating
Waters and cultivating took place.
Hence, into Sumer the giants of old
Went, degreed a civilization, among
The dark-haired people...sporadically
Circumstances would promote social unity.
And there was Susa, Musyan, Elam
And the Persian Gulf--Mesopotamia;
And Queen shub-ad created style, and
Pottery formed, and temples were born.
And kings came and left, like King
Gilgamish; and thus came, gold vases,
And royal graves at UR, and the
Sumerian hymn, and they hummed
To the gods; and the villagers wore
Garments of sheepskins, and molded
Clay figurines, roughly chipped
From crystal, they wore necklaces
Of this kind, and beads;
This was the lost millennium.
They thought somehow or another,
Virtue was a necessity for the gods, thus
Came sacrifices and the daily ritual,
And spells that bind, hoping to remain engaged
To keep their favor, feast-days came and went,
Animals killed like flies, barbarism, yet
It drew the gods, and mans moral judgment.
Prompt, the gods exercised their power,
And man then started to build statues
To their likeness,
And now human sacrifice found its way,
With magic from the dismembered angelic beings,
Those who gave birth to giant children, and
So it was, an unusual phenomenon came.
Astrology was born, Sumerians now ruled
The skies; astronomical knowledge came
From the gods, and the gods (angelic beings)
Came from the sky: ecclesiastical beings.
Mesopotamia came under Sumerian rule,
And Ur, Lagash and Nippur honored the
Moon-god, and then came more public works.
And it became the Sacred Way,
And the walls of the Ziggurat [Temples]
Were built, sanctuaries, with an inner court,
And doors decorated, narrow chambers,
The holy of holies, shrines, sacred vessels;
It was an unusual phenomenon...
This day and age...platforms, brickwork, statues
Gods and goddesses, oil-jars; a lost dynasty.
★ Lyric
DEFINITION
Regularly short poems the express thoughts and feelings of the author.
EXAMPLE
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,And Moumers to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My Mind was going numb - And then I heard them life a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here -
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit the World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -
(I Felt a Funeral in my Brain - Emily Dickinson)
★ Sonnets
DEFINITION
A fourteen-line poem that is written in iambic pentameter [five stressed beats in a line with an unstressed syllable followed by by a stressed one].
EXAMPLE
Turn back the heart you've turned awayGive back your kissing breath
Leave not my love as you have left
The broken hearts of yesterday
But wait, be still, don't lose this way
Affection now, for what you guess
May be something more, could be less
Accept my love, live for today.
(Italian Sonnet - James DeFord)
★ Odes
DEFINITION
Used to be a long and complex poem that is written to celebrate a person or a thing with elegant language.
EXAMPLE
Deathless Aphrodite, throned in floewrs,Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,
With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spririt
Lady, no longer!
Hear anew the voice! O hear and listen!
Come, as in that island dawn thou camest,
Billowing in thy yoked car to Sappho
Forth from thy father's
Golden house in pity!...
(Ode to Aphrodite - Sappho)
★ Elegies
DEFINITION
A mourning poem about a someone who has died.
EXAMPLE
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
(Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard - Thomas Gray)
★ Free verse
DEFINITION
A poem that doesn't follow any rhyme scheme or meter but relies on its' sense of rhythm. It also uses other poetic devices like figure of speech.
EXAMPLE
The fog comeson little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent hanches
and then moves on.
(Fog - Carl Sandburg)
