“A Primer in Poetic Styles” Part 2

Background Information – Literature

“A Primer in Poetic Styles” Part 2

In Part 2 of “A Primer in Poetic Style”, I will continue with a brief explanation of another six commonly known styles. As I noted in Part 1, over the years there have been many poets who used some elements of earlier styles, but modified these poetic forms to create new styles.

7. Epigram

Epigrams are short, witty, and often satirical poems

Epigram Characteristics and Rules

Often take the form of a couplet or quatrain

(2-4 lines in length).

Sample of an Epigram

An example of this method is provided by William Blake:

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour”

.

8. Limerick

Limericks are humorous poems that have a more distinct rhythm. Their subject matter is sometimes crude, but always designed to get a laugh.

Limerick Characteristics and Rules

5 lines
2 longer lines (usually 7-10 syllables)
2 shorter lines (usually 5-7 syllables)
1 closing line to bring the joke home (7-10 syllables)
Rhyme scheme: AABBA

Samples of Limericks

There once was an old man of Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket
His daughter, called Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

—Anonymous

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill can hold more than his beli-can.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week
But I’m damned if I see how the heli-can.

—Dixon Lanier Merritt

9. Ballad

Ballads usually take a narrative form to tell us stories. They are often arranged in quatrains, but the form is loose enough that writers can easily modify it.

Ballad Characteristics and Rules

Typically arranged in groups of 4 lines, also known as a quatrain.

Rhyme scheme: It typically follows a rhyme scheme of ABCB, where the second and fourth lines of each four-line stanza, rhyme, or abab, where every other line rhymes.

Samples of Ballads

John Keats, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

10. Epitaph

An epitaph is much like an elegy, only shorter. Epitaphs commonly appear on gravestones, but they can also be humorous. There are no specific rules for epitaphs or their rhyme schemes.

Sample of Epitaphs

From William Shakespeare’s gravestone:

Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

11. Ode

Odes address a specific person, thing, or event. The ode is believed to have been invented by the ancient Greeks, who would sing their odes. Modern odes follow an irregular pattern and are not required to rhyme.

Sample of an Ode

“William Wordsworth, ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

12. Free Verse

Free verse is exactly what its name implies. There are no rules, and writers can do whatever they choose: to rhyme or not, to establish any rhythm. Free verse is often used in contemporary poetry.

Sample of a Free Verse Poem

The Good Life by Tracy K. Smith

When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.

Although I play around with some of these individual styles, I really enjoy writing poetry in free-verse. I often combine the various styles or forms, depending more on meter than rhythm to” keep the beat” steady. I also use sound-alike words within the lines to give a poem a pleasant sound. Near rhyming can give the writer many more variables than standard rhyming words. When I get to the end of a line and it is not effectively giving me a rhyme, I often go online and use the word I want to modify and follow with “synonyms” or “rhymes with” in a search engine.

Sample:

He often walked down the darkened corridor

Hoping to find something that was no longer there (close at hand)

Search – there,synonyms – found “close at hand” - sounded better and had the same syllable count as corridor

Generally, I am looking for a word or phrase that is more colorful or better describes what I am trying to say.

“A Ways Past the Halfway Point” by Michael S. True

I am crashing and burning here,

Watching this life go down in flames,

Wistfully fantasizing the rising Phoenix,

Hoping for a quick peek behind the billowing purple curtain.

Such are my latter-day blinks,

Spring-like only in their most myopic state,

Accepting that the load-bearing beams are mostly rotten,

It is curious that this rampant decay has spawned

An awkward resurgence of adolescent attitudes,

Seldom seen in any senior moment.

It is the gravity in the gears, I’m guessing,

That will eventually bring me down.

Energy escaping like a passing gas,

Endurance stumbling long before the finish line,

Desire, a dying ember.

And it almost makes me want to hijack an airplane,

Make a serious mistake,

Or believe that I am already in heaven.

Follow your dreams – Make More Art! M.True

(C)2025 Michael S. True - published by TruEnergy Enterprises