Poetry- Types of Poem And Features

Poetry refers in general to the engagement of certain literary devices in a body of words in order to express an idea in a way that attracts attention. Most often the ideas are usually juggled, words are changed and meaning is derived suggestively.

Types of poems

Ode: an ode is a meditative poem that addresses itself to a person or thing in which the good qualities are highlighted.

Dirge: After death lays its cold hands on an individual, a dirge is deployed as it is used to express grief.

Epic: This is a lengthy narrative piece of work that celebrates heroic deeds, events, achievements, figures civilization, and many more.

Narrative poem: it is a poem that tells a tale.

Song or song- lyrics: These are poems usually used for music.

Elegy: this is a meditative lyrical poem that laments the death of a public personage or a friend, or a loved one.

Pastoral elegy: this kind of poem borrows the classical convention of representing its subject as an idealized Shepard in an idealized pastoral background and follows a rather formal pattern. It is a type of poem that mourns the death of a Shepard.

Pastoral poem: this is the type of people that describes a simple rural society, at times its people are used as case studies mostly Shepards. It revolves around the abstract idea of love, beauty, music, and values.

Lyric: a verse or short poem which is meant to be sung accompanied by musical instruments. It also expresses intense personal emotion in a manner suggestive to a song.

Sonnet: this is a fixed verse form an Italian origin consisting of 14 lines with an iambic rhythmic pentameter according to the scheme. That is to say, it verse of fourteen-line possesses five alternative beats of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.

Limerick: this is a light, humorous, mostly covered with ridiculousness five-line poem with a rhyming scheme of aabba, and a dominant meter known as anapestic. limericks usually don’t have authors mainly because it is infested with rude words and dark humor although it was suggested that the poem originated from an 18th-century Irish soldiers’ song, “will you come up to Limerick?”.

Lullaby: a poem composed for the benefit of putting babies at ease or to sleep.

Blank verse:  this is a people that possess an unrhyming iambic pentameter.

Panegyric: this poem eulogizes the heroic deeds or attributes of an individual or a group.

Features of poetry

1. Atmosphere

This in totality refers to the prevailing physical or psychological background of any literary work. It has a huge impact on the reader’s mind at some point it brings clarity to expectations whether pleasant or not.

2. Canto.

This the major division of an epic or a random poem, or a long narrative poem. A canto contains a number of stanzas which makes it similar to the chapter of a book.

3. Couplet.

Two successive rhyming lines of a poem.

4. Enjambment.

The successive continuation of a sense of a phrase beyond the border of line.

5. Mood.

This is the underlying attitude that runs through a poem.

6. Imagery.

This refers to the selective and effective use of words to create pictorial impressions in the imagination of readers and audience or to appeal to his sense of smell, taste, touch, and hearing.

7. Rhyme.

This refers to the sameness of sound between words in poetry. The most common form is the one between words ending different lines of a poem.

Rhyme scheme: this is the sequence in which rhyme occurs at the end of a poem. It is usually represented by lowercase letters, with the same sound bearing the same letters.

8. Quatrain

This is a group of four successive lines in poetry that retains a rhyming scheme.

9.Rhythm.

It is the flow of words and phrases in poetry. It can also be described as the movement of thought to facilitate mood and meaning in poetry.

10. Refrain.

Tho refers to phases, lines, or groups of lines repeated at intervals throughout a poem. It can be comparable to a chorus that sometimes follows a soundtrack.

11. Subject matter.

This is the surface meaning of a poem.

12. Stanza.

This is a group of lines or a collection of verses to form a division or a section of a poem.

13. Theme.

This is the central meaning or interpretation given to the subject matter by the author.

14. Triplet.

It is a group of three successive lines in poetry, rhyming with one another.

15. Verse.

A  line of poetry or composition written in meter.

16. Tone.

The attitude of a poet towards the subject matter. It could sarcastic, humorous, or even ironic. It is usually linked with mood.