Types of poems

Narrative: is poetry that has a plot. The poems  may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex.
Example:
From "Casey at the bat" The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day;

The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,

And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,

A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

Ballads: are usually sad, negative emotional, dramatic narrative stories. Ballads sometime resemble a songs or a painting.

Example:

 "Ballad of the Cool Fountain"

Fountain, coolest fountain,

Cool fountain of love,

Where all the sweet birds come

For comforting-but one,

A widow turtledove,

Sadly sorrowing,

At once the nightingale,

That wicked bird, came by,

And spoke these honied words:

"My lady, if you will,

I shall be your slave."

"You are my enemy:

Begone, you are not true!"

Green boughs no longer rest me,

Nor any budding grove.

Clear springs, where there are such,

Turn muddy at my touch.

I want no spouse to love

Nor any children either.

I forego that pleasure and their comfort too.

No, leave me; you are false

And wicked-vile, untrue!

I'll never be your mistress!

I'll never marry you!

Elegies: is a type of poems that describe something mournful. It usually talks about someone’s dead, a funeral.

Example:

O Captain! My Captain by Walt Whitman.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Sonnets: is a fourteen lines poem, each line containing ten syllables and written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

Example:

On His Blindness by Milton

When I consider how my light is spent (a)
 Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, (b)
 And that one talent which is death to hide, (b)
 Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent (a)
To serve therewith my Maker, and present (a)
 My true account, lest he returning chide; (b)
 "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" (b)
 I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent (a)
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need (c)
 Either man's work or his own gifts; who best (d)
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state (e)
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed (c)
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest; (d)
 They also serve who only stand and wait." (e)

Epic: is a type of poems usually talks about a cultural serious subject, details about a dead of a hero.

Beowulf

Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings,
leader beloved, and long he ruled
in fame with all folk, since his father had gone
away from the world, till awoke an heir,
haughty Healfdene, who held through life,
sage and sturdy, the Scyldings glad.
Then, one after one, there woke to him,
to the chieftain of clansmen, children four:
Heorogar, then Hrothgar, then Halga brave;
and I heard that -- was -- 's queen,
the Heathoscylfing's helpmate dear.
To Hrothgar was given such glory of war,
such honor of combat, that all his kin
obeyed him gladly till great grew his band
of youthful comrades. It came in his mind
to bid his henchmen a hall uprear,
ia master mead-house, mightier far
than ever was seen by the sons of earth,
and within it, then, to old and young
he would all allot that the Lord had sent him,
save only the land and the lives of his men.
Wide, I heard, was the work commanded,
for many a tribe this mid-earth round,
to fashion the folkstead. It fell, as he ordered,
in rapid achievement that ready it stood there,
of halls the noblest: Heorot {1a} he named it
whose message had might in many a land.
Not reckless of promise, the rings he dealt,
treasure at banquet: there towered the hall,
high, gabled wide, the hot surge waiting
of furious flame. {1b} Nor far was that day
when father and son-in-law stood in feud
for warfare and hatred that woke again. {1c}
With envy and anger an evil spirit
endured the dole in his dark abode,
that he heard each day the din of revel
high in the hall: there harps rang out,
clear song of the singer. He sang who knew {1d}
tales of the early time of man,
how the Almighty made the earth,
fairest fields enfolded by water,
set, triumphant, sun and moon
for a light to lighten the land-dwellers,
and braided bright the breast of earth
with limbs and leaves, made life for all
of mortal beings that breathe and move.
So lived the clansmen in cheer and revel
a winsome life, till one began
to fashion evils, that field of hell.
Grendel this monster grim was called,
march-riever {1e} mighty, in moorland living,
in fen and fastness; fief of the giants
the hapless wight a while had kept
since the Creator his exile doomed.
On kin of Cain was the killing avenged
by sovran God for slaughtered Abel.
Ill fared his feud, {1f} and far was he driven,
for the slaughter's sake, from sight of men.
Of Cain awoke all that woful breed,
Etins {1g} and elves and evil-spirits,
as well as the giants that warred with God
weary while: but their wage was paid them!

Free verse:

Is a types of poems where there’s nothing is compulsory except for themes, lines and words.

Example:

Awake

My last night as a full-time child
I didn't want to sleep, for fear of
Waking up in a rustle of too-crisp sheets
And a creak of inadequate bedsprings
With a lightly snoring virtual stranger eight feet away.
And also I didn't want it to be tomorrow,
Because then it would be time to do what
I've denied for three weeks of subsistence
And oblivion--ignoring is bliss.
And I saw everything I never did
Lying around me, pieces and steps of the
Success I never got, reminders that
Whatever I planned, I never got far.
But in the middle of these broken promises
To myself, I could see for the first time
That I have not been broken.
And I must keep myself, all that is real,
As daybreak does, and nightfall.
I exist to others, but all I need is me.
I will be the last promise, when all is said
And kept.

Odes:

Is a type of poem usually talks about serious problems about nature and what suppose to happen, usually written in a difference style.

Examples:

Odes to you

Ode those that would place their family, before their own ambitions. Ode, to the soul of our nation. Women. For if it is men, that are the history, it is surely woman, that are the soul. Ode, to those who provide, protect and guide their loved ones. Ode, to those that know the difference, between compromising and belief. Ode, to all who give their lives, in time of war; especially the majority, for they are mostly, from economically challenge areas. Ode, to a rare breed of politician, who puts their constitutes, before their political ambitions. Ode to those that understand, that their religion is not necessarily the one and true religion. For if that were true, what of the billions of others, that have chosen a religion, not likened to theirs? Ode, to all who react, to the plight of those less fortunate. Ode, to the parents of this world, who teach their children the values of life and living. Ode, to the countless millions, who give of themselves and ask nothing in return. Ode, to those who consciously attempt, to make this a better world. For if we want a better world, each of us, must try and be better. Ode, to the power, that causes words that are lodged in the birth canal of life...to finally be born.

Lyric:

Is a type of poems which does not tell a story, does not have a specific themes but the author will directly express the thoughts and the feelings on the words.

Examples:

Dying
by
Emily Dickinson

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

Significance:

Poems are able to be written in many types with many kind of structure and used to describe difference things, express difference kinds of feelings and thoughts using variety of metaphor so that everyone at every ages, genders or from any other corner of Earth be able read, to have that same kind of feelings the author’s trying to show, to think to put themselves into the character.