Epic Poetry An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form. Nonetheless, epics have...
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Renaissance by Jonas Hyde
Poetry 101
Poetry 101 – Epic Poetry
Poetry 101 – Narrative Poetry
Narrative Poetry Narrative poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic, with objective verse and regular rhyme scheme and meter. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls and lays. Narrative poems are a form...
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Poetry 101 – Meter
In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to a characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per line. Thus, “iambic pentameter” is a meter comprising five feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the “iamb.” This metric system originated in ancient Greek poetry, and was used...
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Poetry 101 – Ode
Ode (from the Ancient Greek ὠδή) is a lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist. It is most likely that the Greek odes gradually lost their musical character; they were...
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Poetry 101- Elegy
Elegy An elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead. The term “elegy” originally denoted a type of poetic meter (elegiac meter). It commonly describes a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegeia (ἐλεγεία) derived from elegos (ἔλεγος)—a reflection on the death of someone...
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Poetry 101 – Ottava Rima
Ottava Rima Ottava rima is a rhyming stanza form of Italian origin. Originally used for long poems on heroic themes, it later came to be popular in the writing of mock-heroic works. Its earliest known use is in the writings of Giovanni Boccaccio. The ottava rima stanza in English consists of eight iambic lines,...
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Poetry 101 – Sestina
A sestina (also, sextina, sestine, or sextain) is a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet (called its envoy or tornada), for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time;...
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Poetry 101 – Sonnet Overview
he sonnet is one of the poetic forms that can be found in lyric poetry from Europe. The term “sonnet” derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning “little song”. By the thirteenth century, it had come to signify a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme...
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Poetry 101 – Haiku (part 1)
Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 moras (or on), in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 moras respectively. Haiku typically contain a kigo, or seasonal reference, and a kireji or verbal caesura. In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line, while haiku in English usually...
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Poetry 101 – Terza Rima
Terza Rima Terza rima is a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Recently it was used by Jonas Hyde in Lament for Lady Beth. Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern A-B-A,...
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