1. Poetry
Structures & Forms

2. What are STRUCTURES of poetry?
Structures refer to TYPES of poems.
Just like the structure of a building, the structure of the poem is its framework.

3. Limerick
Limerick – a humorous verse of three long and two short lines rhyming aabba.

4. Limerick Example
There was an old man with a beard Who said, “It’s just how I feared! Two owls and a hen Four larks and a wren Have all built their nests in my beard.” - Anonymous

5. Sonnet
Sonnet – a poem of 14 lines usually written in iambic pentameter
Iambic Pentameter -- Ten syllables in each line with five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables
The rhythm in each line sounds like: ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM

6. Sonnet Example
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. --William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

7. Narrative Poem
Narrative Poem – tells a story/has a plot

8. Narrative Poem Example
'Tis eight o'clock,—a clear March night, The moon is up,—the sky is blue, The owlet, in the moonlight air, Shouts from nobody knows where; He lengthens out his lonely shout, Halloo! halloo! a long halloo! From “The Idiot Boy” by William Wordsworth

9. Free Verse
Free Verse – poetry that has no regular rhythm or rhyme scheme

10. Free Verse Example
The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. “Fog” by Carl Sandburg

11. What are FORMS of poetry?
Forms of poetry are the building blocks that make up a poem.
Examples of forms: stanzas, literary devices, and rhyme scheme

12. Stanza
A stanza is a group of lines forming the basic meter in a poem. It is like a paragraph in poetry.
A stanza is also known as a verse.

13. How many stanzas are in this poem?
The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. “Fog” by Carl Sandburg

14. The fog comes on little cat feet
The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. “Fog” by Carl Sandburg
Stanza 1
Stanza 2

15. Literary Devices
Literary devices are specific techniques authors use to express ideas.
Examples of literary devices: alliteration, onomatopoeia, simile, metaphor, personification, imagery

16. Examples of Literary Devices
The fog comes on little cat feet. What literary device is used? How do you know? What is the meaning?

17. Rhyme Scheme
Rhyme scheme refers to the ordered pattern of rhymes at the ends of the lines of a poem.
Rhyme scheme is identified with letters.
Example: ABAB

18. Rhyme Scheme Example
There was an old man with a beard Who said, “It’s just how I feared! Two owls and a hen Four larks and a wren Have all built their nests in my beard.” *Label the pattern of rhyme in this poem using letters.

19. Rhyme Scheme Example
There was an old man with a beard A Who said, “It’s just how I feared! A Two owls and a hen B Four larks and a wren B Have all built their nests in my beard.” A