Rhyme’s Reason: Poetry: Genres

Notable English ballads include ”La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Shorter than an elegy, dirges are typically recited at funerals. Christina Rosetti's poem "A Dirge" laments, "all winds go sighing/For sweet things dying."

In The Canterbury Tales, the character of Chaucer has barely begun his "Tale of Sir Topaz" when the Host cuts him off, complaining that Chaucer's "drasty" ("crude") doggerel makes "myn eres aken" ("my ears ache").

Though the eclogue was originally a Greek verse form, the most popular writer of eclogues was the Roman poet Virgil. Virgil's eclogues were distinct from Greek idylls because, rather than idealizing country life, they included political unrest and emotional turmoil.

Classical elegies were written in elegaic couplets, couplets with one line of hexameter and one line of pentameter, but today the word can be applied to a poem of mourning in any form. Traditionally, the English elegy includes praise for the deceased and concludes with a sense of solace or consolation. Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a famous English elegy.

The oldest epic is the ancient Mesopotamian poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Other epics include The Iliad and The Odyssey (Greek), The Aeneid (Latin), Beowulf (Old English), and Paradise Lost (English).

Epithalamiums were originally addressed specifically to brides, although today the word is often used to mean any poem in honor of a marriage. This classic Greek form has been adapted by English poets including Edmund Spenser, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and E.E. Cummings.

Although free verse is not restricted by a set meter or rhyme scheme, it often includes lines breaks, stanzas, and other elements that distinguish it from ordinary prose.

Traditional Japanese haiku include several elements: a strict syllabic pattern (5/7/5), a reference to a season, and a juxtaposition of two distinct images. Masters of the haiku include Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.

Though hymns are often sung, lyrical poems in praise of a deity are also considered hymns. "Caedmon's Hymn," an Old English poem written in the late 7th century, is the first recorded poem in English.

An idyll is a poem that depicts life in the countryside but, unlike an eclogue, it is not typically composed in dialogue form. Tennyson used the word in the title of his Idylls of the King, a series of poems recounting Arthurian legends, although the poems are not technically idylls.

A lament is a poem that expresses great sorrow or grief. Although the traditional English elegy includes a lament, a formal elegy also includes a section of praise for the person who has died, as well as a concluding section that offers consolation.

There are different types of lays. The Breton lai, for example, is a short, chivalric poem that was popular in medieval France and then England. Lay can also be used more generally to refer to ballads or similar narrative poems.

Limericks are comical poems and often use rude or suggestive language. Limericks have a set meter and rhyme scheme (AABBA).

Lyric can refer either to a genre of poetry — short poems in which a speaker expresses strong emotions — or to an individual poem of this genre.

As a verse form, the Italian madrigal consists of lines of 7 or 11 syllables, although there is considerable variation in length and rhyme scheme. English madrigals, which employed a stricter form and rhyme scheme, were written by poets like Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Odes originated in the ancient world and were originally sung. The form was later adapted by English poets. John Keats wrote some of the most famous odes in English, including "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

Originally a speech of praise in classical antiquity, panegyric can also refer specifically to a poem that praises someone, such as Ben Jonson's "To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author William Shakespeare."

Think of pastoral as a broad generic category that includes idylls and eclogues. Unlike idylls and eclogues, however, pastorals can be written in either poetry or prose.

There are two main types of sonnet: the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet and the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet. The English sonnet is usually composed of three quatrains and a couplet, while the Italian sonnet is typically divided into an octave and a sestet.

A tanka is a five-line poem that consists of a single, unbroken sentence or thought. Like haiku, tanka conform to a strict syllabic pattern: 5/7/5/7/7.