An Introduction to Poetic Forms — Rachel S. Donahue

"For a moment, I want you to forget any negative experiences you’ve had with poetic forms. This is an invitation: come play with them."

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An Introduction to Poetic Forms

What was your first exposure to poetic form?

Was it a process of discovery, encountering words that shimmered and wondering how they worked together so beautifully? Or did you have a poetry unit in school, learning words like stanza, meter, and rhyme scheme with a handful of example poems to analyze along the way?

Without a wonder that leads to curiosity, the study of form becomes a terrible slog. Like learning all the rules of football before ever seeing a heart-pounding moment when the game is tied and the ball is moving toward the goal with seconds left on the clock. As adults, those moments of glory are what make us care about the rules of the game. As children, we just want to play.

For a moment, I want you to forget any negative experiences you’ve had with poetic forms. This is an invitation: come play with them.

Think of the rules of a poetic form like the boundary markers and time clock in sports. Having boundaries is what makes the game possible, and being forced into a tight spot within a given time frame can lead to moments of greatness. Sure, it takes practice, but isn’t practice just playing the game with no stakes?

If sports aren’t your thing, think of poetic forms as the edges of a sandbox with a pile of sand toys to play with instead. When you pour in your ideas, you can shape them into recognizable structures. The more you use the tools, the better you become at building castles and digging moats.

It might sound paradoxical, but there is freedom in the form.

Staying within boundaries gives you room to expand creatively.

Following a set of rules actually increases your ability to play.

Don’t believe me? Let’s do a little exercise. Look out the window and write down two quick, plain sentences about what you see.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Do you have your sentences? OK, here are mine:

Birds are chasing one another, possibly in a mating ritual. Squirrels are running along the ground and climbing trees.

Now rewrite your sentences, choosing one letter of the alphabet for each sentence and incorporating that letter as many times as possible in the words of that sentence.

What letters did you pick? How did your sentences turn out?

Here are mine:

Randy robins race by, rustling through the roughage. Skittish squirrels scamper, scavenging, until they seize and scurry up trees.

Which pair of sentences took more creativity to write?

Embracing poetic forms, following their rules, and submitting to the strictures of their structures are just different ways of playing with words. They invariably open us up to new possibilities—even when we go back to writing in free verse. If you ever feel stuck in your writing, set some boundaries by picking a form and see what opens up!

If you’d like to start exploring on your own, Robert Lee Brewer has put together an exhaustive list of poetic forms (alphabetized! with examples!) at Writer’s Digest. The list is a bit overwhelming, but it’s an excellent resource.

To help you dip your toes in the water, I’ve gathered some of my favorite forms and grouped them according to how they work. I’ll give a short explanation of each one, along with an example that should help make the power of the form clear. My hope is that you’ll come away with new ways to think about poetic forms, plus the inspiration to go play with some of them!