How Well Do You Know Your Genres: Poetry?

1. Narrative
2. Epic
3. Dramatic
4. Satirical
5. Sonnet
6. Lyric
7. Elegy
8. Verse Fable
9. Prose
10. Speculative

Poetry by definition is “Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.”

--Merrian-Webster

Poetry by use is expression, reflection, sometimes collaboration, confessions, truths & lies, destiny & fates, beautiful memories, defying moments, and lastly reasons to ask why, how, when. Many people use poetry as an outlet, a different writing platform taking language to a higher level--a way to fool with language into strange, mesmerizing, beautiful images, metaphors, similes, description, and so much more!

• Usually in prose (no rhythm or rhyme—just ordinary language), or verse (meter, rhythm, and/or rhyme)
• Usually chronical, but has connected events
• Contains characters & plot
• Reads like a story
• Has a narrator

• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Ring and the Book by Robert Browning

• Highlights cultural norms
• Questions cultural values
• A hero
• Can have romantic or mythological theme
• Begins with a muse
• Speeches that are formal and most times long
• Sometimes a descent into hell or the underworld
• Divine intervention
• A clear theme
• The setting is vast --> character usually travels or goes on a hero’s journey
• May have multiple POVs (point-of-views) and each character may be in a different location
• Uses heavy repetition
• Uses catalogues and lists and history lessons
• In media res, starts in the middle

• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• The epic of Enuma Elish
• The Iliad
• The Odyssey
• The Aeneid
• Beowulf
• Epic of King Gesar
• Paradise Lost

• A story
• Meant to be spoken
• Lots of scenes
• Must achieve one of Aristotle’s three unities: unity of plot, unity of place, and/or unity of time
• Can have subplots
• Lots of action which makes it fast paced
• Conflict carries throughout entire poem

• Almost all of Shakespeare’s writing
• T. S. Elliot
• George Bernad Shaw
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Using humor to criticize or attack someone
• Also uses ridicule, follies, abuses, shortcomings
• And Exaggeration
• And Irony
• And to describe politics and other issues

• John Dryden
• John Wilmot
• Ignacy Krasicki

• Originally written for love, suffering, woes, and hopes
• Religious experiences
• Art reflections
• War experiences
• Has 14 lines each
• If there is more than one sonnet is called a sonnet cycle
• Adheres to this rhyme pattern: abab cdcd efef gg

• Robert Lowell
• John Milton
• Shakespeare
• William Wordsworth
• Thomas Wyatt
• William Butler Yeats

• Typically short (1-2 pages) (200-500 words)
• Has a theme, state of mind, emotional state
• Heavy figurative language
• Melodic like a song
• Meant for reflection/contemplative nature
• Intimate feelings/thoughts of the poet
• (An ode is a longer form of lyrical poetry)

• On being Human by C.S. Lewis
• Night by Sidney Lanier
• Cleon by Robert Browning
• The Cuckcoo by Robert William Service
• Ode to Tomatoes by Pablo Neruda

• Usually written on a person’s death
• Can be solemn meditations
• Can have questions on death
• May have elegiac couplets
• Expresses mourn/sorrow

• Elegy Upon Tiger by Jonathan Swift
• Elegy for my father by Annie Finch
• The earth has many keys by Emily Dickinson
• Elegy in the classroom by Anne Sexton

• Uses verse form
• Story features animals, plants, objects, forces of nature with human characteristics that teaches a moral lesson
• Various meter and rhyme

• Aesop
• Vishnu Sarma
• Ambrose Bierce

• Short story
• Fiction
• Fragmentation
• Compression
• Repetition
• Rhyme
• Varies in length and subject
• Lyricism
• Figurative language
• Usually one character
• Has a plot and setting

• Be Drunk by Charles Baudelaire
• Pablo Neruda
• Rainer Maria Rilke
• My dearest Frank I wish your Joy by Jane Austen
• The vision of Judgemen by Lord George Byron

• “beyond reality” elements
• Science-fiction elements
• Horror elements
• Strange/macabre
• Use any form (rhyme, prose, free verse, narrative, sonnet, quatrain, dramatic)

• Saving Love by Victor Buhagiar
• Travel Light by John Beam
• Inferno Yawn by Jim Cross
• Fearless, My spirit by Anaika Avery
• Restless Natives by Anonymous