Styles of Poetry

Question 1

Blank verse

Answer 1

There is no rhyme and lines may be conversational, so there are no stanzas. However, long blank verse poems often have verse paragraphs. For example’ Mending Wall’ by Robert Frost

Question 2

Ballads

Answer 2

Originally songs that told a story. Many were sung or read aloud in public. They are therefore long, narrative poems, often written in quatrains with a refrain. For example ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ by Oscar Wilde

Question 3

Epic poems

Answer 3

Long narratives or stories, collected from oral traditional storytelling. They often deal with heroic exploits of a person. For example Seamus Heaney’s translation of the Old English epic Beowolf

Question 4

Ode

Answer 4

Homes address to a specific person or thing. ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by John Keats

Question 5

Acrostic poem

Answer 5

The first, last or other letters in a line spell out a particular word or phrase. The most common is where the first letter of each line spell out a word or phrase

Question 6

Epitaph

Answer 6

A phrase or form of words (poem) written in memory of a person who has died, specially as an inscription on a tombstone

Question 7

Free verse

Answer 7

Poetry that doesn’t rhyme or have a regular rhythm

Question 8

Haiku

Answer 8

Japanese poem of 17 syllables, in three lines of five, seven and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world

Question 9

Limerick

Answer 9

A humorous five line poem with the rhyme scheme aabba

Question 10

Lyric

Answer 10

A fairly short poem which is an expression of strong feelings of thoughts or perceptions of the speaker in a mediative manner