All About Poetry

Poetry terms and information students should know...

Three forms of poetry:

1. Narrative: tells a story and has characters, setting, and plot complete with a problem and solution.

2. Lyrical: has a specific rhyming patter and rhythm.  Lyrical poetry is what we hear in the songs we like.

3 Free verse: free verse poem breaks all writing rules!  It does not require a specific rhythm pattern, rhyming words, punctuation, or capitalization.

Other poetry terms:

Poems have LINES not sentences.

Poems are made up of STANZAS (which are similar to paragraphs).

Poetry has METER (the beat) and it can have a musical quality created by the meter.

Poetry often have various RHYME schemes.

REPETITION is a popular technique used in poetry.  Repetition of an entire stanza or the last lines of stanzas is referred to as REFRAIN which is like a CHORUS we hear in songs.
REPETITION is also seen through ALLITERATION which is the repetition of beginning sounds of words such as Sally Sells Seashells by he Seashore.