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Ars Poetica

A term meaning “the art of poetry,” an ars poetica poem expresses that poet's aims for poetry and/or that poet's theories about poetry.

Adam's Curse
Ars Poetica
Ars Poetica

Aubade

A love poem or song welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn.

Break of Day

Common Measure

A quatrain that rhymes ABAB and alternates four-stress and three-stress iambic lines. It is the meter of the hymn and the ballad.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers Break, Break, Break It Couldn’t Be Done Jacob So We'll Go No More a Roving The Children's Hour The Tables Turned To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
A Red, Red Rose I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (340) It sifts from Leaden Sieves - (291) Light Shining out of Darkness Song: “You charm'd me not with that fair face” The Darkling Thrush To Althea, from Prison
And If I Did, What Then? I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - (591) It was not Death, for I stood up, (355) Love Song Suppose The Listeners To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

Concrete or Pattern Poetry

Verse that emphasizes nonlinguistic elements in its meaning, such as a typeface that creates a visual image of the topic

[in Just-]
Valentine

Couplet

A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length.

A Celebration of Charis: I. His Excuse for Loving A Shropshire Lad  2: Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Author’s Prayer Catch a Little Rhyme Dawn of Man Epitaph For Allen Ginsberg He Mele Aloha no ka Niu January, 1795 Monument On Shakespeare. 1630 Queens Stepping Stones The Author to Her Book The Contract Says: We'd Like the Conversation to be Bilingual The Delta The Maid’s Lament The Passionate Shepherd to His Love The Star The Tyger To the Memory of Mr. Oldham White Box
A Locked House American Solitude Barber Constancy to an Ideal Object Do Not! Experience For the Nefarious I am Trying to Break Your Heart Lazy November Cotton Flower Peligro Recuerdo Symptoms of Prophecy The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow The Daring One The Ecchoing Green The New Decalogue The Poem You’ve Been Waiting For The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls The Water-fall Violins Yellowtail
A Poison Tree An Apology For Her Poetry Before the Birth of One of Her Children Coy Mistress Dream of the Phone Booth Feasting gravity furnace Introduction to the Songs of Innocence Metamorphosis On Quitting Piano Rickshaw Boy The Arrow and the Song The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young The Debt The Golden Shovel The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd The Spring The Tree To an Athlete Dying Young What Women Are Made Of

Elegy

In traditional English poetry, it is often a melancholy poem that laments its subject's death but ends in consolation.

Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter Father Son and Holy Ghost In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr. Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market On the Death of Richard West The Day Lady Died To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
Elegy on Toy Piano For Allen Ginsberg John Lennon On Shakespeare. 1630 The Charge of the Light Brigade The Legend Toy Boat
Epitaph Frederick Douglass Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday On the Death of Anne Brontë The Darkling Thrush To an Athlete Dying Young

Epic

Free Verse

Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the poet does not adhere to a metrical plan in their composition.

(to crave what the light does crave) [if mama / could see] "oh antic God" A Blessing A Noiseless Patient Spider Advection Blues American Smooth Apollo At Noon Author’s Prayer Barber Black Boys Play the Classics Brother, I’ve seen some Cadillac Moon Carousel Christmas, 1970 Consider the Hands that Write this Letter Courtesy Danse Russe DetoNation Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River Early Elegy: Headmistress Eating Together Eve Revisited Ex Machina Famous Flying Lesson Free Radical Future Memories Gitanjali 35 Grandfather Hanging Fire Harold’s Chicken Shack #86 High Noon at Los Alamos Hunger for Something I Eat Breakfast to Begin the Day I Know, I Remember, But How Can I Help You I, Too In In Heaven In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr. Inside Out Istanbul 1983 Key to the Dollar Store Kitchen Fable Late Summer Le Maudit Leda Lions Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota Maui’s Mission Meditation on a Grapefruit Memory As a Hearing Aid Mighty Pawns Momma Said Mothers mulberry fields Night Nurse Not Guilty Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market On the Existence of the Soul Oranges Passing Perhaps the World Ends Here Pinocchio Pleasures Possible Answers to Prayer Propositions Rabbits and Fire Refusing Silence Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West Saguaro Sanctuary Sea Church Self-Portrait September Song Sheltered Garden Siren Song So This Is Nebraska Song of Weights and Measurements Squirrels Surfaces The Angelfish Greet Odysseus The Bloody Sire The Calm The Emerald Mosque on the Hill The Forecast The Goddess Who Created This Passing World The Greatest Grandeur The Luggage The Negro Speaks of Rivers The Poet The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter The True-Blue American Their Story They are hostile nations To Elsie To the Angelbeast Today Toy Boat Twilight Undress Vision in Which the Final Blackbird Disappears Watching the Perseids Where the Wild Things Go Windigo Y2K
[Buffalo Bill 's] [in Just-] from Stanzas in Meditation: Stanza 83 A Blind Fisherman A Small Moment alternate names for black boys And Soul Arrhythmia At the Holiday Gas Station Backdrop addresses cowboy Beginning Break of Day in the Trenches bug’s psalm Camouflaging the Chimera Catch Clear Night Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15) Cow Song Dead Reckoning III Diameter Dust Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest El Olvido Everybody Believes They Are the Good Guy Fairy-tale Logic Father Son and Holy Ghost For a Traveler From Blossoms Ghost Dance Glitch gravity furnace Happy Hour Helen Himself Hush I Genitori Perduti I look at the world If They Should Come for Us In a Dark Room In Little Rock In the Basement of the Goodwill Store Interlude It Isn’t Me Kindness Kites Layabout Learning to swim Legacy Little Father Magnitudes Mechanism Medusa Mi Historia Mimesis Monstrance Man Movement Song My Brother the Artist, at Seven Nocturne Not Horses Ode to the Midwest On the Lawn at the Villa Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark Past-Lives Therapy Pietà Piute Creek Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) Prayer Rug Queen-Anne’s Lace Rain of Statues Remarks on Poetry and the Physical World Rock Me, Mercy Saguaros Say Grace Seen Through a Window Semblance: Screens September, 1918 Siblings Snake Oil, Snake Bite Somewhere Southern Gothic Sunshower Susie Asado The Bad Old Days The Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space The Campus on the Hill The Enigma The Garden The Golden Shovel The Hill The Minks The Night of the Shirts The Rain The Robots are Coming The Well Rising Then and Now Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird To Live with a Landscape To the Harbormaster Torque Truth Serum Two Guitars Vagrants and Loiterers Waiheke What pleasure a question, Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper Women Like Me Youth
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] “No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved” 300 Goats A Kind of Meadow Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation Always Something More Beautiful Angels Ars Poetica At the New Year Banneker Big City Speech Bright Copper Kettles Burning the Old Year Carnival Cathedral of Salt Cloud Fishing Corn Maze Coyote, with Mange Deaf-Mute in the Pear Tree Dressing My Daughters Dyed Carnations Earth, You Have Returned to Me End of Days Advice from an Ex-zombie Evolution of My Block Falling: The Code First Storm and Thereafter For the Climbers Fundamentalism Girl Sleuth Good People Greed Harold & the Purple Crayon Here Is an Ear Hear Holding Court I Am the People, the Mob I Hear America Singing I won’t come Ikebana In California: Morning, Evening, Late January In Love, His Grammar Grew In the Desert Intimate Detail Katrina Kingdom of Debt Last Snow Lazy Least Concern Lenten Song Lunar Baedeker Make a Law So That the Spine Remembers Wings Meditation at Lagunitas Meeting at an Airport Midnight Office Mockingbird Moon Mr. Darcy Negative Nocturne Now I Pray Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow Onions Over and Under Peculiar Properties Pilgrims Planetarium Poem for Haruko Prisoners Queens Cemetery, Setting Sun Reflections on History in Missouri Respiration Rocket Saint Francis and the Sow Scale Self-Inquiry before the Job Interview Semi-Splendid Sharks' Teeth Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt Snowy Owl Near Ocean Shores Somewhere Thuban Is Fading Speak Superfluities Tasting Braille The Bear The Bug The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee The Film The Gift The Good in the Evil World The Lamb The Moonlight The Oldest Living Thing in L.A. The River of Bees The Strength of Fields The Wheel Revolves There Are Birds Here Through a Glass Eye, Lightly To Myself to the notebook kid Totem Pole Turning the Tables Under the Lemon Tree Very Large Moth Waking from Sleep When the saints went Who Said It Was Simple Xenophobia

Imagery

These poems are largely concerned with the use of strong and evocative images to create a highly visual, imaginative reading experience.

[It would be neat if with the New Year] Anecdote of the Jar Confessions Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness It was not Death, for I stood up, (355) Meeting at Night Old Men Playing Basketball Tamer and Hawk The Collar The Sun Rising Valentine
“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” As Children Know Constancy to an Ideal Object I am Trying to Break Your Heart Kubla Khan Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market Onions The Bearer The Destruction of Sennacherib Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Work without Hope
A Birthday Cadillac Moon Four Glimpses of Night I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (340) Light Shining out of Darkness Ode to the Midwest Over and Under The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow The Enigma To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works

Metaphor

A comparison that is made without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”

[It would be neat if with the New Year] A Poison Tree Caged Bird I am Trying to Break Your Heart Love (III) Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market Reverie in Open Air Sharks' Teeth The Collar The Larger The Rain-bow The Water-fall What the Oracle Said
“Hope” is the thing with feathers A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (340) Meditation at Lagunitas Ode to the Midwest Self-Inquiry before the Job Interview Tamer and Hawk The Enigma The Metal and the Flower The Snow-Storm To Be Held
A Certain Kind of Eden Anecdote of the Jar Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness Kindness Not for That City Perhaps the World Ends Here Sestina in Prose The City of Sleep The Kiss The Pulley The Sun Rising Two Guitars

Rhymed Stanza

The repetition of syllables, typically at the end of a verse line.

[My prime of youth is but a frost of cares] A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky A Locked House A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning Advice to a Prophet Amor Mundi At Melville’s Tomb Battle-Hymn of the Republic Buckroe, After the Season, 1942 Cold Blooded Creatures Constancy to an Ideal Object Desert Early Affection Epilogue Fable for Blackboard Follow Thy Fair Sun Fortuna Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness Immortal Sails In School-days Invictus It Couldn’t Be Done January, 1795 Lenten Song Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Looking into History Lovers' Infiniteness Medusa Miniver Cheevy Night Magic (Blue Jester) Nude Descending a Staircase On Inhabiting an Orange Over the Roofs Pity the Beautiful Recuerdo Say not the Struggle nought Availeth Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862) Song Song of the Shattering Vessels Spring and Fall The Affliction of Richard The Barnacle The Children's Hour The Conqueror Worm The Day The Doubt of Future Foes The Good-Morrow The Listeners The Morning-Watch The Pilgrim The Road Not Taken The Sun Rising The Time I’ve Lost in Wooing The Tyger The Watchers To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing Vain and Careless What It Does Wonderbread
A Barred Owl A Country Boy in Winter A Song: Lying is an occupation Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight After the Disaster And If I Did, What Then? Auto-Lullaby Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter Channel Firing Common Dust Crossing the Bar Dirge in Woods End of Summer Epitaph on the Lady Mary Villiers Father For Allen Ginsberg Gulf Memo I Knew a Woman In a Dark Time In the Past Is My Team Ploughing Jacob Kubla Khan Let the Light Enter Like Brothers We Meet Love (III) Luke Havergal Meeting at Night Much Madness is divinest Sense - (620) No Coward Soul Is Mine Of Molluscs On Monsieur’s Departure Pentatina for Five Vowels Pome Revenge Shall earth no more inspire thee Sign Song in a Minor Key Song: “Blow, blow, thou winter wind” Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening The American Soldier The Brook The City of Sleep The Convergence of the Twain The Definition of Love The Ecchoing Green The Heavenly City The Maldive Shark The Mothering Blackness The Properly Scholarly Attitude The Song of the Smoke The Tables Turned The Traveller-Heart The Vacuum Thou Art My Lute To Autumn Valentine Winter Remembered You, Andrew Marvell
A Birthday A Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme A Thank-You Note Adlestrop Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun At Cross Purposes Barter Break, Break, Break Chorus Sacerdotum Concord Hymn Dawn Chorus Disenchantment Bay Envy Eros Turannos Floating Island For My Contemporaries Hap I look at the world In Flanders Fields Insomnia Israfel Janet Waking Larkinesque Life in a Love London Love Armed Mad Song Meeting Point My Papa’s Waltz Not for That City Old Mama Saturday on new year’s eve Piano Recess Safe in their Alabaster Chambers (124) She Walks in Beauty Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight Song of the Powers Song: Go and catch a falling star Suppose The Animals The Charge of the Light Brigade The Collar The Darkling Thrush The Destruction of Sennacherib The Fair Singer The Kiss The Man He Killed The Owl The Pulley The Speakers The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls The Two Boys The War in the Air Thoughtless Cruelty Translations from the English War Ballad Women

Sonnet

A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme. Literally a “little song,” the sonnet traditionally reflects upon a single sentiment, with a clarification or “turn” of thought in its concluding lines.

['Joy of my life, full oft for loving you'] “Find Work” “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” A Fixed Idea After the War Anthem for Doomed Youth Bereavement Dreamers Fairy-tale Logic Frederick Douglass Here How I Discovered Poetry Idea 43: Why should your fair eyes with such sovereign grace Immortal Sails November Cotton Flower On Education Prints Snowflake Sonnet 15: When I consider everything that grows Sonnet 23: Methought I saw my late espoused saint Sonnet 84: While one sere leaf, that parting Autumn yields Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways The Children of the Poor The Craftsman The Gentle Art of Shabby Dressing The Poet As Hero To - To the Negro Farmers of the United States When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be
[Sleeping sister of a farther sky] “I think I should have loved you presently” "Love of My Flesh, Living Death" A January Dandelion All Hallows’ Eve As Kingfishers Catch Fire Childhood England in 1819 Flaxman Golden Retrievals Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God I Find no Peace Idea 61: Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part kitchenette building Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII Silence Sonnet Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes Sonnet 91: On the fleet streams, the Sun, that late arose Spring The Clouded Morning The Cricket and the Grasshopper The Illiterate The Soldier To Her Father with Some Verses Unholy Sonnet 1 Winter
“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” “Time does not bring relief; you all have lied” from The Princess: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal A Virginal American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [“Inside me is a black-eyed animal”] At Carmel Highlands Dawn Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven that Died Before For My Daughter Grief Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud Idea 20: An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still If We Must Die Life On An Unsociable Family Ozymandias Since There Is No Escape Sonnet 1 Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent Sonnet 55: Not marble nor the gilded monuments Sonnet: On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic Strange! The Consent The Cross of Snow The New Colossus The World Is Too Much With Us To the Desert What to Say Upon Being Asked to Be Friends Work without Hope