Poetry Terms & Forms Educational Posters
for the language arts classroom and home schoolers.

Poetry Terms

Alliteration: When two or more neighboring syllables start with the same beginning sound. Example: "The poet picks palate- pleasing peaches."

Assonance: When the same vowel sound is repeated in a section of a poem. Example: "Brown cows sound loud in a rowdy crowd."

Internal rhyme: Any rhyme that occurs inside a line rather than at the end of the line.

Meter: When you analyze a poem's rhythm, you are looking at its meter. Meter is measured in basic unites called "feet," which are the patterns of accented and unaccented syllables. Below are some terms associated with different sorts of meter:

Iamb: Foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Example: biZARRE, guiTAR, KaREEM AbDUL-JabBAR.

Tochee: Foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. Example: HAPpy, SNAPpy, HERE comes PAPpy.

Anapest: Foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one. Example: run aWAY when the MAN with the HOOK says HelLO.

Dactyl: Foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones. Example: ALL of a SUDden the WORMS were emBARassed.

Rhyme scheme: The rhyming pattern of the lines of a poem. Rhyming lines are marked with letters of the alphabet: if two lines rhyme with each other and then the next three rhyme with each other, the passage has an aabbb rhyme scheme.

Stanza: A section of lines grouped together; also called a verse.

Any poem that tells a story in short stanzas is called a ballad. In the days before books and recordings, musicians went from town to town singing their ballads to people, who then repeated them and handed them down to future generations.
Ballads are found in virtually every language and culture. One of the most famous ballads in the world is the American song “John Henry,” the story of a “steel-drivin' man” who sets out to prove that he is more powerful than a machine. ...

When English poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, (1517-1547) first invented blank verse, he had no way of knowing how it would catch on. But soon every English poet owed him a huge debt. John Milton used blank verse in Paradise Lost, William Shakespeare used it in his plays, and many others over the last 500 years have found it useful as well.
Blank verse does not rhyme, but instead establishes its mood through its regular rhythm, which is called iambic pentameter: ten syllables per line, alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. This unrhymed iambic pettern fits so well with the English language that it is still used by poets who want to bring weight and flow to their words. ...

Inspired by reading Japanese haiku, early 20th-century poet Adelaide Crapsey invented the cinquain as an American counterpart to this form. Cinquains have five lines (“cinq”is the French word for “five”) and are based on counting the number of syllables in each line...

TRIAD - Adelaide Crapsey
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow...the hour
Before the dawn...the mouth of one
Just dead.

Like the ballad, the epic poem tells a story in verse. But unlike the short and songlike ballad, epics are large, expansive, and meant to be chanted and told rather than sung.
All ancient civilizations have their epics: in India, it's the Mahabarata, in Greece, the Aeneid, the Odyssey, and the Iliad, in Babylon, it's Gilgamesh; among the Nyanga people of Zaire, it's the Mwindo. These long poems are imaginative works that served as cultural history, mythology, and moral lessons to those who heard and repeated them over the centuries. ...

Invented hundreds of years ago in Japan, the haiku is one of the most famous poetic forms in the world. Traditional Japanese haiku contains seventeen onji, or syllables. Some haiku poets writing in other languages use fewer or more syllables, but most stick with seventeen.
A haiku must also contain a kigo, a word or phrase associated with a particular season: for example, frogs are always associated with spring. A seventeen-syllable poem without a kigo is called a senryu. Senryu are usually used as social commentary or for humorous effect. ...

old pond.....
a frog leaps in
water's sound
-- Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694)

• Japan posters
• Richard Wright posters

It's all about the jokes! The limerick is the best known form of humorous poetry. Its rollicking rhythm and aabba rhyme scheme simply cannot be taken seriously... The first well-known master of the limerick was English nonsense poet Edward Lear. He wrote more than 200 little pieces on characters like the Young Lady of Hull and the Old Man of Melrose... And here's a fun and confusing fact: limericks get their name from the town and country of Limerick, Ireland...but no one really knows why.
• Ireland posters

The ode is one of the oldest and most noble forms of poetry. There are several different ways to write odes, but every one is written in praise of something or someone. Some odes celebrate great deeds, while others honor great people or concepts like Immortality or Evening.
The ode was developed by the ancient Greek writer Pindar (522?-443 B.C.E.), the greatest lyric poet of his day. His odes were written so they could be chanted and sung by a chorus when victorious athletes and warrior returned to their home city.
• Greece posters

Far from being a recent phenomenon, rap poetry has roots going all the way back to the West African griots, or storytellers, and the improvised ballads of the Caribbean. In its current form, rap is often set to funk or rock beats to form a style of music called “hip-hop.”
Rapping is much more than just rhythmic talking, the way it is often stereotyped. Hip-hop artists are quite sophisticated in the way they use internal and external rhyme, new and interesting meters, and alliteration. And the best rap music can teach important lessons at the same time that it makes people dance...
• Africa posters

One of the most beautiful and celebrated forms of poetry, each sonnet follow three basic rules:

1. It must be a rhyming poem.
2. It must contain exactly fourteen lines.
3. Every line must be in iambic pentameter.

Sonnets can cover any topic and assume any tone; they can be beautiful, humorous, romantic, angry, or intense. ...

• Henry Howard portrait
• Thomas Wyatt portrait
• William Shakespeare posters

One of the most elegant dn intricate forms of poetry, the villanelle, was born in 15th-century Italy and perfected in France.
Villanelles consist of nineteen lines in six stanzas. The first five stanzas have three lines in an aba rhyme scheme, and the final stanza contains four lines, which rhyme in an abaa pattern. This regular rhyme scheme helps the villanelle seem gentle and thoughtful.
What makes the villanelle truly special however, is its repetition. The poem's first and third lines are alternated throughout the poem at the end of every verse. This structure makes villanelles very difficult to write, so few poets attempt them and even fewer succeed.
The most famous villanelle in English is “Do not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas. This villanelle is one of the best-loved poems in the world. ...
• Francois Villon Portrait Print