Discover The Different Types Of Poetry: A Comprehensive Guide

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To be honest, when was the last time you picked up a poem? For many adult readers, poetry is a lost art that they once studied in school and even interpreted classics like Shakespeare, gothic pieces by Edgar Allen Poe, or Modern American works by poets like Langston Hughes.

Poetry is like a bridge between fiction and non-fiction, where artists can talk about real experiences in a surreal way that utilizes linguistic alliterations, metaphors, and verse as opposed to prose. You may be surprised there are dozens of subgenres of poetry, not just the classics that you studied in school.

One major trend in modern poetry is being led by young female poets who are bringing poetry back as a trending form of art such as Rupi Kaur and Bella Thorne, who use it as a building block for the community.

Rediscover poetry and bring it back into your life by following this guide to the different types of poetry other than what you may be imagining, as well as some prominent authors and pieces that fall into each category. While it would be impossible to detail the hundreds of subgenres of poetry, this guide touches on the most common ones.

Narrative Poetry

Narrative poetry is a great subgenre for folks who want a storyline. The center stage of this kind of poetry is to tell a story through various characters and perspectives, although usually only the narrator. There are several sub-sub genres that often fall under narrative poetry including the lay, ballad, epic, and idyll.

You may have read the very famous modern poem, Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer, which takes a comical angle at heroic troupes. For lovers of classics, The Odyssey by Homer is by far the most famous narrative poetry book but you can find genres far and between.

Lyric Poetry

emily dickinson representation — Emily Dickinson representation

Compared to narrative poetry which tells a story, lyric poetry expresses an emotion. What might come to mind is the infamous Roses are Red poem which is the simplest form of lyric poetry. Although, some of the most beautiful works of art fall under this category such as Sonnect 18 by William Shakespeare or I Felt A Funeral In My Brain by Emily Dickinson.

As lyric poetry represents a great plethora of subgenres, you can expect figurative language, metaphors, and similies.

Dramatic Poetry

You have probably been wondering about the third major type of poetry, made famous by great artists like Shakespeare, Aristotle, and Dante.

Dramatic poetry is often written in verse, as opposed to certain types of poetry which can almost benefit from a dramatic reading of the work in order to elicit emotion from the reader. Dante’s Inferno is one of the most famous examples, in addition to Shakespeare’s Seven Ages Of Man.

Free Verse

For all the rule breakers out there, free verse poetry is a form of art that closely mimics natural speech and does not fit into a specific category or qualification. It is simply expression through words, anyone can write a free verse poem to express themselves. Spoken word is a famous practice that falls into this category as well.

The viral poem by infamous poet Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb is one of the most famous modern examples of free verse poetry.

Sonnet

Close to the opposite of free verse, which has no rules, is a sonnet which has explicit rules. A sonnet follows a rhythmic pattern, often an iambic pentameter, and it is usually limited to 14 lines.

While it may seem like a limitation, it is also an art form to express oneself in a limited amount of words. Of course, the most famous sonnets are in Shakespeare’s collection, but if you are looking to expand your reading list check out authors such as Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Sir Thomas Wyatt.

Vignettes

the house on mango street by sandra cisneros

Another exciting form of poetry that draws outside the box is vignettes. These poems are similar to free verse in that they don’t follow any specific rhythm, although instead of telling an entire story it is usually reflective of one scene. A must-read if you want to explore vignettes is The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

Other Rhythmic and Musical Poetry Forms

As there are too many types of poems to count or write about in this guide, it is important to give space to the forms of poetry that involve music and rhythm. While some forms of these poems were expressed above, there is a lot more to discuss.

Many forms of poetry follow rhythmic rules, such as sonnets discussed previously, and can follow rules such as meter, Iambic, and trochee.

Apart from rhythm, there is music. Ballads are the most famous type of poem that includes a mandatory musical element, and they even cross artistic modalities into popular songs. Bon Jovi’s Don’t Stop Believing counts as a ballad, along with Prince’s Purple Rain.

That is one of the most exciting elements of poetry, from a song to the stage or reading it on the page, there are many ways to consume the art.

Genre: Poetry