Types of Poetry

Narratives: Poems that tell stories.

Examples: There once was a boy,

And Jack was his name.

His last name was 'Pot'

And his mum's was the same.

Jack Pot and his mum
Were as poor as could be.
With only a cow
To give milk for their tea.

"Jack Pot," said his mum
"Things really are bad.
We must sell the cow,
For she's all we have."

Ballads: songs that tells a stories about death, betrayal or love.
Example:
Ballad of a Broken Heart

Standing on one side of the bridge
You on the other
Burned at both ends
of the times we spent with one another
As the bridge slowly crumbles apart
A melody starts to play
The Ballad of the Broken Heart

Reminscing of a secret love affair
Wallowing in the pits of despair
This isn't the ending
Its a brand new start
As a melody begins to play
The Ballad of the Broken Heart

For a wounded heart time does not heal
Only gives it a better conceal
In the beginning like a flower our love arose
To end this chapter
The book will close

From within, the music will start
Hail! Sing, sing aloud to the melody
The Ballad of the Broken Heart

Epics: long narrative poems that talk about heroes.
Example:
Two Halves of One Heart
Two creatures once split a nation,
And there stood a torn creation:
To the North a Tiger paced,
Seeing things that no one faced.
A Dragon called the South it’s home,
There it stood, like the walls of Rome.
But war ever closer loomed
To bring the beasts to their doom.
But how can it be Civil when
Both sides shed blood, neither to win?
The Dragon fell, fire lost;
The Tiger roared at the cost.
Two became one and learned to fly! –
A Dragon with a Tiger’s eye.
Lyrics: poems that express one's feelings or emotions.
Example:
I close my eyes lightly whenever I feel lonely again
I no longer fear when your breath holds me
No one in the world can replace you
You are the only one in I’ll be there for you baby
You and I together, It’s just feels so right
Even though i bid you goodbye, to me this world is just you
You and I together, don’t ever let go my hands
even though i bid you goodbye, to me this world is just you
Just you and I
Forever and ever...
~ Translation from Korean  - You and I - Park Bom

Sonnets: Poems that are written with 14 lines in iambic pentameter
Example:


Odes: Lyrics poems that are written specific about something.
Example:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight
                 To me did seem
            Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
             Turn wheresoe'er I may,
              By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Elegies: Sad, sorrow poems that usually about a death of someone
Example: "Here Captain! dear father!/This arm beneath your head;/It is some dream that on deck,/You've fallen cold and dead."-"O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman.

Free Verse: Poems that don't follow the pattern of meter or rhyme scheme.
Example:

Fog by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches
and then moves on.