Poetry: Forms & Genres

In literature, short, narrative poem usually relating a single, dramatic event. Two forms of the ballad are often distinguished—the folk ballad, dating from about the 12th cent., and the literary ballad, dating from the late 18th cent. MORE

From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
Verse which is unrhymed, and composed of lines which normally contain ten syllables and have the stress on every second syllable, as in the classical iambic pentameter. MORE

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Poetry without metrical form. At the beginning of the 20th century, many poets believed that the 19th century had accomplished most of what could be done with regular metre, and rejected it. MORE

A lyric poem, usually a fairly long one, with lines of different lengths and complex rhythms, addressed to a particular person or thing. MORE

Imaginative literary form, particularly suitable for describing emotions and thoughts. Poetry is highly ‘compressed’ writing, often using figures of speech to talk about one thing in terms of another. MORE

From The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English
The word was invented by Spenser to entitle his poem to celebrate the double betrothal of Katherine and Elizabeth, daughters of the Earl of Worcester. They were married in November 1596, the same year in which the poem was published. MORE

A poem of 13 or sometimes 10 lines with only two rhymes, and with the first line used as a refrain after the eighth and thirteenth lines. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The most complicated of the verseforms initiated by the troubadours (q.v.), the s. is composed of six stanzas of six lines each, followed by an envoi (q.v.) of three lines, all of which are unrhymed. MORE

A short poem with 14 lines of 10 or 11 syllables each and a regular rhyming pattern according to the scheme: the Italian sonnet consists of an octave and a sestet, whereas the English sonnet consists of three quatrains and ends with a rhyming couplet. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A French fixed form composed of eight lines and using only two rhymes, disposed in the following scheme: ABaAabAB (a capital letter indicates a repeated line). MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Introduced into France in the 16th c. the v. first had as its only distinguishing features a pastoral subject and use of a refrain. MORE

Sounding Translation is an Internet-accessible interview series that features audio interviews in which translators reflect on the experience of translating contemporary poetry. As an ongoing digitized oral history project, it traces the development of relationships of exchange and collaboration among American poet-translators and their international peers working in languages including Arabic French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Also known as e-poetry, digital poetry, new-media poetry, hypertext poetry, and computer poetry, all but the last of which have been used more or less interchangeably. Whereas once computer poetry might have been assumed to denote combinatory texts automatically generated from the formal rules and logic of a computer program (a practice dating back to the 1950s), the shift to electronic poetry is indicative of the much wider spectrum of creative activity now taking place,

Poetry which conveys meaning through the physical arrangement of the words on the page as well as through the words themselves. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A school of poetry which flourished in England and America between 1912 and 1914 and emphasized the virtues of clarity, compression, and precision. MORE

Modernism is based on a concern with form and the exploration of technique as opposed to content and narrative. In literature, writers experimented with alternatives to orthodox sequential storytelling. MORE

From Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century
Narrative poetry, broadly defined, is driven by plot and character and privileges story over subjectivity while maintaining the rhythms and compression associated with poetry rather than prose. MORE

From Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century
As a casually organized revival of metered and rhymed poetry among younger American poets in the 1980s, the New Formalism, or Neo-Formalism, was spearheaded primarily by poets who had come of age during the 1960s and 1970s. MORE

From Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century
Interpreted broadly, the category of performance poetry might include any poem that is read, sung, recited, acted, or otherwise performed before an audience. MORE

A late 18c and early 19c movement in art, literature and music, characterized by an emphasis on feelings and emotions, often using imagery taken from nature, and creating forms which are relatively free from rules and set orders. MORE

From Contemporary Youth Culture: An International Encyclopedia
SLAM is a hybrid of spoken word and performed poetry, sometimes with music, that gives individuals an opportunity to voice their opinions and feelings on any topic; conveys urgency, action, and excitement. MORE

Transcendentalism was a series of new ideas that flourished among writers and philosophers in New England during the 19th century. MORE