11 Poetic Forms, Reviewed in Verse

Acrostic

Always I’ll associate acrostics with the sort

Crying over crushes with whom they cannot cavort.

Read the rubbish over and you’ll want to rend your eyes:

Obvious, obsequious, obnoxious, and unwise.

Still, there might be someone somewhere writing these things well

Toying with techniques too avant-guard to ever sell

If such innovation is, it’s only on the fringe;

Center-stage, acrostics can’t be anything but cringe!

Couplet

What could be shorter and what could be sweeter?

One line on top; one below to complete her

Haiku

The English haiku

Has how many syllables?

Folks fight about it.

Limerick

The space in a lim’rick is tight

It’s lovely when things go aright

But if a line’s weak

There’s just no room to tweak

And you may as well call it a night.

Sestina

If you’re a bit deterministic

If you think life is preordainèd

You’ll be a fan of the sestina

And of the way that it’s arrangèd

It’s a peculiar sort of poem

But, don’t you worry, I’ll explain it

You need six words in mind to start it

They’re what make things deterministic,

Ending each line within the poem

All in a sequence preordainèd.

Once your six words are thus arrangèd

You’ve pretty much made a sestina

Such repetition! A sestina

Always repeats; you can’t avoid it.

It’s repetitiously arrangèd

And it goes on, deterministic.

It is more strongly preordainèd

Than any other kind of poem.

Six major stanzas in the poem—

That is the rule for the sestina—

And at the end a preordainèd

Short bonus stanza to complete it.

(That one’s still more deterministic

With how it has to be arrangèd.)

Though it’s oppressively arrangèd

Still a sestina is a poem

Metrically nondeterministic;

Meter or not, it’s a sestina

Anything goes here so long as it

Keeps to the endings preordainèd.

So, if you love things preordainèd,

Love rules for how things are arrangèd,

If you see structure and adore it,

This might just be your kind of poem.

“Six sets of cheers for the sestina!

Nothing is more deterministic!”

I don’t like it—too preordainèd,

Deterministic’lly arrangèd.

Such is this poem, the sestina.

Petrarchan Sonnet

I have this friend who’s quite a coffee fiend

I asked her how she liked to have it made

She looked at me as if my wits had frayed

And said she’ll be pretentious when she’s queened

“Til then, she likes it black but also creamed

She’ll drink a k-cup or the highest grade

She’d drink it mixed with powdered lemonade

She’ll drink whatever, if it’s coffee-beaned

I’m just the same with sonnets, I’ll admit

That question-answer format makes me glad

And I’ll take any version, by my troth;

The perfect shape for wordplay and for wit

For feelings joyous or for longings sad

Petrach or Shakespeare? Either’s fine—or both!

Shakespearean Sonnet

If one poetic form were all we had,

If all the others were to disappear,

In such a case, it wouldn’t be so bad

If what we kept was what we have right here.

Shakespearean-style sonnets have a tight

But still capacious structural design

And when you do them well and do them right

Their tintinnabulation is divine.

Some other forms are comely too, I’ll own

And other forms aren’t quite so done-to-death

But none of them can trounce a form so prone

To pierce our hearts and make us catch our breath.

Let all the heirs of Shakespeare's tongue attest

For poems Shakespeare’s sonnet is the best.

Triolet

The problem with the triolet

Has got to be tetrameter.

It’s nice in every other way:

The problem with the triolet

Is simply that it must obey

Its metrical parameter.

The problem with the triolet

Has got to be tetrameter.

Villanelle

So villainous the villanelle

With all its little strictures,

A mere poetic carrousel.

One hopes to see one's poems swell

From words to soaring pictures—

But, villainous, the villanelle

So strangles sense that one can't tell

The meaning from the structure.

A mere poetic carrousel,

The rhymes in joyless parallel

And preordained admixtures.

So villainous, the villanelle

Is intricate as Dante's hell,

Loud as heraldic tinctures—

A mere poetic carrousel.

Of all the forms which I know well

None's such a shameful fixture.

So villainous the villanelle,

That mere poetic carrousel.

Whatever Emily Dickenson Is Doing

With common meter in our heart

And rhymes within our mind

We’re well-equipped to ply our art

And write of all we find.

Our form’s the more accessible

Because it’s not ornate

It’s comf’table, caressable—

In short, it’s pretty great.

Free Verse

Free verse

I always do it wrong, every time

I’m running after meter, after rhyme

Or after prose

Unqualified: I feel that I’m

Not bright enough

To have my training wheels

Peeled off

Though I esteem what keener poets do

For now, I will leave free verse be:

It takes a more poetic soul

To run free