Poetry Forms

The Sestina
The sestina is a poem made up of six stanzas of six lines each and a final stanza of three lines, for a total of thirty-nine lines. The unique and definitive rule for the sestina, however, is that the last word of each line is repeated, becoming the last word of a different line in the next stanza, and so on. The last stanza contains all six words in three lines, in no particular order. The order for the end words through the stanzas goes:

1 2 3 4 5 6
6 1 5 2 4 3
3 6 4 1 2 5
5 3 2 6 1 4
4 5 1 3 6 2
2 4 6 5 3 1
(123456)

The end words do not necessarily have to be the exact same word - homonyms are legal substitutes. This obviously opens the options a bit more, as writing one of these is harder than it seems.
Here are my three sestinas, so you can see how it looks in writing:

By the Numbers
      This sestina shows the pattern very well, because the ending words are "one", "two", "three", "four", "five", and "six".

A Prayer of Repair
      This is a more poetic and heartfelt sestina, and although I still use a homonym or two, it is much more clear and precise than the first.

Finding Nothing To Adore
      I would consider this my best sestina, not only because it is the most heartfelt and poetic, but because it also has rhythm and rhyme. Of course, each stanza rhymes in a different pattern, but I think you can get the picture.


The Pantoum
The Pantoum is a simpler yet more difficult poem than the sestina. It is far more repetitive, for its defining rules are ABAB stanzas of four lines each, and the second and fourth lines of one stanza become the first and third of the next. It can be any number of stanzas long, but the ending line must be the same as the first. The result is a poem that takes two steps forward and one step back the entire way through, finally ending on the same note it started.
For an example that I'm very proud of, here is my only pantoum:

Pantoum in Boston
      This takes you on a motionless, circular trip through Boston in the fall, though I've never been to Boston in the fall, nor sat on a park bench there in the rain, nor read a poem in French...


The Shakespearean Sonnet
There are two main types of sonnets, the Shakespearean and the Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet. While all sonnets have 14 lines, the main difference between the two is the rhyme scheme. Petrarchan has the most variation, but always starts with two quatrains (stanzas of 4 lines) of abba. These are followed either by two stanzas of 3, or 3 stanzas of two, not usually rhyming couplets.
The Shakespearean Sonnet, which is the type that I write and the type that we are most familiar with, contains 3 quatrains followed by a final couplet, in the manner abab cdcd efef gg. Most Shakespearean sonnets are supposed to have iambic pentameter (see below), but it is not always required. The rules for sonnets are becoming less strict, or at least other sonnets are appearing that do not fit "Petrarchan" or "Shakespearean" forms only.

Sonnet XVIII
      This is of course a very good example of a Shakespeareans sonnet, as it is written by Shakespeare himself.

Hypocrisy
      Written by my brother Matt, this is a sonnet that doesn't quite fit the mold of Shakespearean, being as it is (technically) all couplets.

I have two sonnets so far, both of them Love Sonnets:

Love Sonnet #1
      This one does not quite follow the Shakespearean form, in that it is not in iambic pentameter. However, the rhyme scheme is the same. This is a decription of my love for Brenda.

Love Sonnet #2
      This one fully follows the Shakespearean form, iambic pentameter and all. It also focuses its subject matter more on two things: the lasting nature of true love, and the musical symphony that true love is.


The Prose Poem
The prose poem is a hybrid, plain and simple. You could argue very well that the prose poem is not real poetry, but you could argue just as well that it is not prose either. Prose poems can have rhythm, but it will be much more masked than any lined poetry. The standard unit of a prose poem is not the line, but the sentence. Prose poems come in all types and sizes, some using a great deal of alliteration, others comparison or contrast, others repetition, others picturesque language. All are poetical in style, but none are poems. It would be very hard to rhyme them, but they usually don't need it. They rely on the pictures they create in the mind, and it is less storytelling than it is observing.
Here are my two prose poems, to show you examples:

New Life
      This one uses repetition and comparison to tell the story of a bird facing a tornado.

Grandma's Bathroom
      This one uses descriptive, imaginative situations to describe a single room of Grandma's house.


Iambic Pentameter
The explanation of basic iambic pentameter is fairly simple, though the practice of it is much more difficult. Most easily explained, iambic pentameter is a poem whose lines follow the basic rhythm of five "iambs", which is usually a "weak/STRONG" beat of two syllables. Thus, each basic line has ten syllables, sounding like this: "weak/STRONG, weak/STRONG, weak/STRONG, weak/STRONG, weak/STRONG." ALthough this is the basic pattern, sometimes one of those iambs can be switched around to a "STRONG/weak" if necessary. You can see this in the first line of "Love Sonnet #2" below. Iambic pentameter is one of the most common rhythmic patterns in English poetry, and can be used in most of the basic rhyme schemes and poetry forms. I have used it in several poems so far, and intend to continue! It allows for many more descriptive words to be inserted, adding to the quality of the poetic verse. It is hard to stop once you have mastered writing in it! Here are four very different poems of mine that all use iambic pentameter:

Of The Lily's Fine Bouquet
      This is written in a song form, the verses of which are four couplets, and the choruses are rhyming quintains.

Love Sonnet #2
      This is my second sonnet, and it follows Shakespeare's form of three quatrains of abab, followed by a final heroic couplet.

The Hard Rock
      This is a relatively simple use of iambic pentameter, with 10 rhyming couplets in 5 stanzas.

The Rescue
      This was the most difficult of my poems in iambic pentameter, because it is a story, and has 32 iambic pentameter couplets.



New forms
Some poets choose to invent their own forms for poems. In William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow", he uses four stanzas that are built like wheelbarrows to bring across the visual representation. Others may write in a circle, etc. I wanted to see if I could do a poem that had 26 lines, each line starting with the next letter of the alphabet, and each line being exactly one letter longer than the one above it, thus creating a pyramid effect. Although the poem itself is not that meaningful and somewhat hard to follow, its form succeeded. This was a very difficult poem!

A Pyramid to Selfishness
      A form poem of my own invention, lamenting my present impecunious state.



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