There are many different types of poetry. I counted 50 on a quick search of the internet. You may have heard of Haiku and Limericks. There are the more obscure types too, like Terzanelle and Sestina. Learning different types of poetry though, isn’t nearly as much fun as inventing your own, so here are some ideas about that.
Types Of Poetry – Playing With Stanzas
What is a stanza? A division of a poem consisting of two or more lines. How many ways can you structure a stanza? As many as you want. Look at this stanza from the poem, “Gratitude:”
So there is nothing to say
There is nothing to say
There is nothing
Nothing…
But gratitude
Each line is a smaller part of the previous line. In this case, it quiets the mind in order to emphasize the last word: gratitude. However, this idea could be used in many ways. You could start with a line like, “She watched the birds come in from the sea,” and it can reduce to, “Come in from the sea;” “From the sea:” “Where Michael was left alone in the storm.”
Each stanza could have lengthening lines....