2017 has been a year of dramatic highs and lows for most of us. Whether it’s a personal or a universal joy or tragedy, one of the best ways to communicate emotion and stimulate empathy is with poetry. So instead of picking out a December “assignment” for the YeahWrite poetry slam, I’m going to run down a few of our favorite forms from past years.
Use these forms as a starting point for your own poetry, or throw down the gauntlet in the Coffeehouse – I’m always up for a tritina!
I only have a few minutes!
Not a lot of time to write, or no time to keep long segments of verse in your head? Too tired to rhyme? We’ve got you covered.
Try out one of the shortest poetry forms, the haiku. Weighing in at only 17 syllables, a haiku (and its longer cousin, the tanka) can be a quick write as you watch the seasons turn. Um. See what I did there with “season” and “turn”? They’re two required elements for a formal haiku. Brush up on the rules and don’t just dash off 17 syllables. It’ll be worth the tiny bit of extra time.
Another short form is the couplet, which can be a building block for longer poetry like the memoriam stanza or a complete poem on its own. Couplets are the microstories of poetry: see how much you can pack into a tiny space!
Looking for something a little longer? The 45 syllables of a nonet have no form or content requirements. It’s just pure counting, a nine syllable line down to… one.
The sijo is another 40-50 syllable form, in three or six lines. These Korean poems have a lot in common with a sonnet, structurally, but are much shorter and with no rhyme or meter requirement although a good sijo prioritizes lyrical flow. After all, these poems started as a musical form.
Oldies but Goodies
Look, there’s nothing wrong with the basics. In fact, if you understand how to write a sonnet – even if you never write another one as long as you live – you’ll be a better poet with more tricks in your bag. With that in mind, take a swing at one of these forms:
Blank verse – not free verse, but blank verse – will give you a solid structural foundation in scansion. Leave the rhymes at home for this one, but bring your musical ear. You’ll need it.
Okay, confession time. I really hate sonnets. When I said that up there, I was talking about me. My writing partner can lay down a perfect sonnet like it was nothing; I sweat and struggle and they come out stilted and awkward. Or obscene. But you know what? They’ve made me a better poet. Whether Shakespearean, Spenserian, or some other type, they’ll make you a better poet too. Just don’t ask me to write one for you.
Say it again
One of the techniques that’s often overlooked in poetry is repetition. More than rhyme, repetition can keep a poem fresh while not making you write a lot of extra words. Look through these forms and see how your understanding of a single line can change over the course of a poem.
We featured one of the shortest (or longest, if you make it that way) repeating forms last month with the cascade poem. These poems recycle their first verses into lines in each subsequent verse. There’s no meter or rhyme requirement, which makes this an easy one to get your feet wet.
Another short repeating form with a few more rules is the triolet. You only have to write five lines to make one of these eight-line poems – they recycle the other three. Triolets do have meter and rhyme requirements, so they’ll take you a little bit longer to write, but it’s well worth the effort. And besides – you only have to write five lines, how hard can it be?
Rather than re-using entire lines, the rondeau recycles a single whole or partial line as its refrain. This is another lyrical form, so approach it with a song in your heart. Note: It doesn’t have to be a happy song. I’m not going to tell you what to feel.
The ballade splits the difference between rondeau and triolet: the last line of each verse is the same. Mercifully, that’s about it for requirements. So if you’ve had one perfect sentence stuck in your head for a while, or you had to delete a darling from another work, this is a great way to recycle it!
No section on repetition would be complete without my personal second-favorite poetry form, the tritina (its big sister the sestina is my favorite, because it makes me feel extra fancy to write one). This form tends to be the darling of the YeahWrite editors, and you can almost always coax us out for a tritina slam on the grids. And you can always-always ask us for three prompt words in the coffeehouse if you’re looking for inspiration on a rough week!
Last but not least, read and comment
I know. I get it. Poetry can be tremendously intimidating to read and comment on. It’s so personal, and what if you didn’t understand it, and and and…
That’s why we put together this handy guide for poetry critique. It’s got some tips and tricks for reading and commenting on poetry intelligently, so that you, your readers, and your writers can be on the same, er, page.
Don’t be intimidated by poetry – there’s a form out there for everyone!
