Confused by all the types of poetry? You can sort them by shape: fixed forms like the sonnet or villanelle, and looser kinds like lyric and free verse.
For the wider picture of reading and writing, see the literature guide, which places poetry alongside other kinds of writing.
| Form | Key fact |
|---|---|
| Sonnet | 14 lines (almost always) |
| Iambic pentameter | 5 metrical feet per line |
| Villanelle | 19 lines, 2 rhymes |
| Sestina | 6 stanzas of 6 lines each |
| Cinquain | 5 lines (five-line poem) |
| Ballad | Quatrains rhymed abcb |
These figures come from Interesting Literature’s guide to poem types and the Academy of American Poets glossary. Definitions and forms can be described differently by different sources, so check the source before you rely on them.
What is poetic form?
According to the Academy of American Poets, form is the structure of a poem, including its line lengths, line breaks, meter, stanza lengths and rhyme scheme (poets.org glossary). Every poem has a form, but some forms are unique to individual poems and others are widely used and come with their own rules.
That means you can sort poetry in more than one way. Some types are named for a set structure, such as the sonnet, villanelle, haiku and prose poem. Others are named for what the poem does, such as voicing a feeling or telling a story.
Form also shapes tone. Many sonnets are love poems, so a poem in the sonnet form may sound reverent or yearning, as the same glossary notes.
Poets also bend the rules on purpose. In “A Modified Villanelle for My Childhood,” Suzi F. Garcia changes the traditional villanelle form by adding three stanzas, and the glossary treats that departure as an essential part of the poem.
Lyric poems, sonnets and odes
The lyric is named for the lyre, the harp-like instrument played since classical times. Sappho, the ancient Greek love poet, wrote short poems about desire, love and regret that were meant to be accompanied by music played on the lyre (Interesting Literature).
Today a lyric is essentially any poem that expresses the thoughts and feelings of a speaker, rather than telling a story or teaching a moral lesson. A lyric requires no specific form, so it is a broad category. Edward Thomas’s “Tall Nettles” is the example that guide offers.
The sonnet is one of the most popular forms a lyric can take. Sonnets are almost always fourteen lines, though Gerard Manley Hopkins experimented with a shorter form and George Meredith with a longer one. They are almost always written in iambic pentameter, and love poets from Petrarch to Shakespeare helped tie the form to love poetry.
Sonnets come in several named varieties, each with a rather different rhyme scheme:
- Petrarchan sonnets
- Shakespearean sonnets
- Spenserian sonnets
For a model of the form, Interesting Literature recommends Christina Rossetti’s “Remember.”
The ode is a poem written to something or someone, so it always has a clear and recognisable subject. Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” is a poem of praise addressed to the bird.
Blank verse and free verse: poetry with fewer rules
To understand blank verse, start with the metre. Iambic pentameter means each line has five metrical feet, usually iambs, and an iamb is two syllables with one light stress and one heavy stress. You can hear it in a line from Romeo and Juliet: “But SOFT! what LIGHT through YON-der WIN-dow BREAKS?”
Many lines in Shakespeare’s plays are in unrhymed iambic pentameter. That is known as blank verse, because the rhymes are left blank. Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” is recommended as an example of its speechlike, conversational quality.
Free verse is often confused with blank verse, but it goes a step further: it does without not only rhyme but a regular metre as well. Robert Frost mocked it as “like playing tennis with the net down,” on the grounds that a poet needs a structure to work within. Even so, the best poets who write in free verse use the lack of form to their advantage, and Audre Lorde’s “Coal” is the example given.
Here is a quick way to keep the three apart:
- Metred and rhymed: a regular beat plus rhyme, as in many sonnets.
- Blank verse: a regular beat, no rhyme.
- Free verse: no regular beat and no rhyme.
Villanelle, sestina and cinquain: forms built on pattern
The villanelle is one of the tightest and most restrictive forms there is. It began in Italy as a song that accompanied dancing, and it has nineteen lines and just two different rhymes. The first and third lines repeat several times as refrains, which can make the poem feel as if it keeps circling the same preoccupations.
The most famous villanelle in English is surely Dylan Thomas’s 1952 poem about his dying father, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” where the refrains work as a rallying call. Sylvia Plath’s early poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” is another example.
The sestina is possibly even more demanding. It has six stanzas of six lines each, and the lines of each stanza end with the same six words in rotation. Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina” shows how those repeated words take on new meaning each time they return.
The cinquain, strictly speaking, follows rules set out by the American poet Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914) for her five-line poems. The stress count rises from one heavy stress in the first line to four in the fourth line, then drops to one in the last.
Narrative poetry: epics and ballads
A narrative poem is, in the broadest sense, any poem that tells a story. It has a recognisable story that goes beyond the brief scene a lyric might give you. Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes” is offered as an example from the era of Romanticism.
An epic is a long narrative poem dealing with epic themes such as war, adventure and a clash of civilisations. Well-known examples include:
- Virgil’s Aeneid, from ancient Rome.
- Homer’s Iliad, from Greece.
- Beowulf, one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon poems, from England.
The Descent of Inanna predates Homer by more than a thousand years and is described as a kind of proto-epic.
The ballad is a subset of narrative poetry with a specific form. It uses quatrains in which lines of tetrameter (four feet) alternate with lines of trimeter (three feet), rhymed abcb. Ballads were popular in the Middle Ages because travelling singers could sing them in taverns, so people who had never been taught to read could enjoy them.
How do you tell one type of poem from another?
You do not need a technical vocabulary to start. Work through these steps on any poem you meet:
- Count the lines and stanzas. Fourteen lines points to a sonnet, nineteen to a villanelle.
- Listen for rhyme and repetition, such as refrains or recurring end words.
- Tap out the beat to see whether the lines follow iambic pentameter.
- Ask whether the poem voices a feeling (lyric), tells a story (narrative) or addresses someone or something (ode).
- Remember that poets break the rules, so treat a mismatch as a clue rather than a mistake.
Once you can name the form, the next step is reading closely, and this guide on how to analyze a poem walks through that process. Narrative poems also reward comparison with prose fiction, and the elements of a novel offer a useful set of ideas to borrow when you follow a poem’s story.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main types of poetry?
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Common types include lyric, sonnet, blank verse, free verse, villanelle, sestina, cinquain, narrative, epic, ballad and ode. Some are defined by structure and others by what the poem does.
What is the difference between blank verse and free verse?
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Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter, so it keeps a regular metre. Free verse drops both rhyme and regular metre.
How many lines does a sonnet have?
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Sonnets are almost always fourteen lines. Gerard Manley Hopkins experimented with a shorter form and George Meredith with a longer one.
What is the difference between a lyric and a narrative poem?
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A lyric expresses the thoughts and feelings of a speaker. A narrative poem tells a story.
Can poets break the rules of a form?
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Yes. Poets often break a form’s rules to subvert readers’ expectations, as Suzi F. Garcia does when she adds stanzas to the villanelle, according to the Academy of American Poets glossary.
