Monday, August 6, 2018

Mental Library: Poetry: Types of Poems-- Acrostic, Free Form, Sonnet

Hello, Friends!

Today concludes our poetry series. There is tons more to talk about with poetry, but I'm just providing a basic overview. I enjoy poetry, just not as much as other types of literature. :)

Last week, we looked at a few different types of poems, and this week, we'll finish that. There are millions of types of poems, so these past two poetry posts are not complete at all, but these are just a few I've come into contact with.

Acrostic

Basically, acrostic poems use adjectives starting with the letters in a word. Here's an example:

Charismatic
Agile
Terrific

The first letter of each adjective spells the word "Cat." When I was little, I made acrostic poems for my parents using their names. :)




Free Form

Free form poetry is anything you want it to be. This is fairly self-explanatory, so I'm not going to give you an example.

Sonnet

Hurrah! Sonnets! Sonnets are tricky.

First, there are three stanzas of four lines each. These are called quatrains. After these, there is a couplet. The rhyme scheme is: abab cdcd efef gg.

To make it more complicated, sonnets have to follow a specific foot pattern. Feet are made up of stressed and unstressed syllables (if you do not know what these are, please see here.) Sonnets use iambic pentameter, which means five feet, each consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. A famous example from Shakespeare says: (U = unstressed, S = stressed)

Shall I comPARE thee TO a SUMMer's Day?
      U   S  U      S     U     S   U    S        U     S        


Have you heard of any of these before? What type do you prefer to write? What type do you prefer to read?

Spruce Nogard

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