Types of Poetry

1. Narrative:

Definition: Poem that tell about the story.
Example: There was three kings into the east, 
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.

Significance: This type of poems the writer talking about the story they made or base on the true story.

2. Ballads:

Definition: Poems that talk about love and dramatic things.

Example: Oh the ocean waves may roll, 

And the stormy winds may blow,
While we poor sailors go skipping aloft
And the land lubbers lay down below, below, below
And the land lubbers lay down below.

Significance: When you love someone you write ballads to express your feeling.

3. Epic:

Definition: Poems that talk about the hero.

Example: By the shore of Gitchie Gumee, 

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

Significance: The writers write about the person is a hero to their countries or saved them so they write epic.

4. Lyric:

Definition: Poems that express love.

Example: I heard a fly buzz when I died;

The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

Significance: This type of poems is for the person who you love or have a strong feeling with.

5. Sonnets:

Definition: Poems that has 14 lines which express feeling.

Example: When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,

For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

Significance: This type of poems make the reader more understand and have rhythm in 14 words.

6. Odes:

Definition: Poems that write to thank or say good about someone.

Example: My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.

Significance: The writers idol someone and so they want to write about that person.

7. Elegies:

Definition: Poems about the person who is dead.

Example: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Significance: The writers miss that person and feel sorry for the lost of that person so they write elegies.

8. Free verse:

Definition: Poems that write in a freedom way.

Example: My last night as a full-time child

I didn't want to sleep, for fear of
Waking up in a rustle of too-crisp sheets
And a creak of inadequate bedsprings
With a lightly snoring virtual stranger eight feet away.
And also I didn't want it to be tomorrow,
Because then it would be time to do what
I've denied for three weeks of subsistence
And oblivion--ignoring is bliss.
And I saw everything I never did
Lying around me, pieces and steps of the
Success I never got, reminders that
Whatever I planned, I never got far.
But in the middle of these broken promises
To myself, I could see for the first time
That I have not been broken.
And I must keep myself, all that is real,
As daybreak does, and nightfall.
I exist to others, but all I need is me.
I will be the last promise, when all is said
And kept.
Significance: Free verse is cool because the writer can write whatever they want and don't have to be like stick in rules.