BALLAD: A typical ballad is a plot-driven song, with one or more characters hurriedly

revealing events leading to a dramatic conclusion. Often, a ballad does not tell but rather shows
the reader what’s happening, describing each crucial moment in the trail of events. To convey
that sense of emotional urgency, the ballad is often constructed in quatrain stanzas, each line
containing as few as three or four stresses and rhyming either the second and fourth lines, or all
alternating lines.
Centuries-old in practice, the composition of ballads began in the European folk tradition, in
many cases, accompanied by musical instruments. Ballads were originally preserved orally for
generations and passed along through recitation. Their subject matter dealt with religious themes,
love, tragedy, domestic crimes, and, sometimes, political propaganda.
Ballads began to make their way into print in fifteenth-century England. During the Renaissance,
making and selling ballad broadsides became a popular practice, though these songs rarely
earned the respect of artists because their authors, called “pot poets,” often dwelled among the
lower classes.Later however, Nineteenth-century poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William
Wordsworth wrote numerous ballads. Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the tale of a
cursed sailor aboard a storm-tossed ship, is one of the English language’s most revered ballads.
SONNET: Sonnet is a popular classical form that has compelled poets for centuries.
Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, employing one of
several rhyme schemes, and adhering to a tightly structured thematic organization.
The name is taken from the Italian sonetto, which means “a little sound or song.”
Two sonnet forms provide the models from which all other sonnets are formed: the Petrarchan
and the Shakespearean.
Petrarchan Sonnet
The first and most common sonnet is the Petrarchan, or Italian. Named after one of its greatest
practitioners, the Italian poet Petrarch, the Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two stanzas, the
octave (the first eight lines) followed by the answering sestet (the final six lines). The tightly
woven rhyme scheme, abba, abba, cdecde, or cdcdcd, is suited for the rhyme-rich Italian
language, though there are many fine examples in English. Since the Petrarchan presents an
argument, observation, question, or some other answerable charge in the octave; a turn, or volta,
occurs between the eighth and ninth lines. This turn marks a shift in the direction of the
foregoing argument or narrative, turning the sestet into the vehicle for the counterargument,
clarification, or whatever answer the octave demands.
Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan sonnet to England in the early sixteenth century. His
famed translations of Petrarch’s sonnets, as well as his own sonnets, drew fast attention to the
form. Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, a contemporary of Wyatt’s, modified the Petrarchan,
thus establishing the structure that became known as the Shakespearean sonnet. This structure
has been noted to lend itself much better to the comparatively rhyme-poor English language.
Shakespearean Sonnet
The second major type of sonnet, the Shakespearean, or English sonnet, follows a different set of
rules. Here, three quatrains and a couplet follow this rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The
couplet plays a pivotal role, usually arriving in the form of a conclusion, amplification, or even
refutation of the previous three stanzas, often creating an epiphanic quality to the end. In Sonnet
130 of William Shakespeare’s epic sonnet cycle, the first twelve lines compare the speaker’s
mistress unfavorably with nature’s beauties, but the concluding couplet swerves in a surprising
direction.

Variations on the Sonnet Form

John Milton’s Italian-patterned sonnets (later known as “Miltonic” sonnets) added several
important refinements to the form. Milton freed the sonnet from its typical incarnation in a
sequence of sonnets, writing the occasional sonnet that often expressed interior, self-directed
concerns. He also took liberties with the turn, allowing the octave to run into the sestet as
needed. Both of these qualities can be seen in “When I Consider How My Light is Spent.”
The Spenserian sonnet, invented by sixteenth-century English poet Edmund Spenser, takes its
structure from the Shakespearean—three quatrains and a couplet—but employs a series of
“couplet links” between quatrains, as revealed in the rhyme scheme: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee.
ODE: An ode is a type of poem, generally written to address and praise a subject. It
utilizes rhyme and a complex or irregular metrical form.
Odes originated as Greek choral songs performed at religious festivals. They recounted stories
concerning heroes, gods, and victories in battle. The original odes were set to music and
followed a specific, complex three-part structure utilizing a strophe (the first section), an
antistrophe (the second section), and an epode (the final section).
The form was adapted by Latin poets who loosened the structure and wrote in a less formal tone.
Eventually, the ode was popularized in Renaissance England. In the English tradition, the
term ode was used more loosely and meant either a poem of praise or a poem containing an
emotional outburst.
According to former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, “By the nineteenth century [the ode] was a
longish lyric poem, often with an elaborate stanza structure written in lines of varying and
irregular length and often with different formal patterns in different parts.”
There are three types of Ode: Pindaric, Horatian, and irregular.
The Pindaric Ode was named after ancient Greek poet Pindar, who is often credited as the creator
of the Ode. Pindar’s Odes were choral poems about heroics intended for musical accompaniment
and performed at public events. Pindaric odes follow a three-part structure that consists of a
strophe, an antistrophe, and a concluding epode. These odes have varying line lengths and
irregular rhyme patterns between sections. The strophe and antistrophe typically follow the
same rhyme and meter, while the epode introduces a new pattern.
The Horatian Ode was named after Latin poet Horace. The Horatian form is more intimate,
contemplative, and informal in tone and subject matter. These are also called homostrophic
odes, as a consistent meter, line length, and rhyme scheme is used throughout the entire poem.
They are generally written in couplets (two-line stanzas) or quatrains (four-line stanzas).
Irregular Odes, as the term indicates, do not follow the conventions of the Pindaric or Horatian
forms. Traditionally, these poems follow certain patterns of rhyme and meter, but they do not
adhere to the same structures of the other types. As of the mid-1900s, many irregular odes have
been written entirely in free verse, their writers no longer utilizing even an irregular rhyme
scheme or metrical pattern.
LYRIC: Lyric is a verse or poem that is, or can be sung to the accompaniment of a musical
instrument (in ancient times, usually a lyre) or that expresses intense personal emotion in a
manner suggestive of a song. Lyric poetry expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet and is
sometimes contrasted with narrative poetry and verse drama, which relate events in the form of a
story. Elegies, odes, and sonnets are all important kinds of lyric poetry.
In ancient Greece, an early distinction was made between the poetry chanted by a choir of
singers (choral lyrics) and the song that expressed the sentiments of a single poet.
Latin lyrics were written by Catullus and Horace in the 1st century BC; and in medieval Europe
the lyric form can be found in the songs of the troubadours, in Christian hymns, and in various
ballads. In the Renaissance the most finished form of lyric, the sonnet, was brilliantly developed
by Petrarch, Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton. Especially identified with the
lyrical forms of poetry in the late 18th and 19th centuries were the Romantic poets, including
such diverse figures as Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Shelley,
Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and Goethe.

ELEGY: The elegy is a form of poetry in which the poet or speaker expresses grief, sadness, or
loss. The word elegy derives from the Greek élegos, meaning "funeral lament.” It was among the
first forms of the ancients, though in Greek literature it refers to a specific verse form as well as
the emotions conveyed by it. Any poem using the particular meter of the elegiac couplet or
elegiac distich was termed an elegy. It was composed of a heroic or dactylic hexameter followed
by a pentameter.
The elegy began as an ancient Greek metrical form and is traditionally written in response to the
death of a person or group. Though similar in function, the elegy is distinct from the
epitaph, ode, and eulogy: the epitaph is very brief; the ode solely exalts; and the eulogy is most
often written in formal prose.
The elements of a traditional elegy mirror three stages of loss. First, there is a lament, where the
speaker expresses grief and sorrow, then praise and admiration of the idealized dead, and finally
consolation and solace. These three stages can be seen in W. H. Auden’s classic “In Memory of
W. B. Yeats,” written for the Irish master poet.
Other well-known elegies include “Fugue of Death” by Paul Celan, written for victims of the
Holocaust, and “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman, written for President Abraham
Lincoln.
Many modern elegies have been written not out of a sense of personal grief, but rather a broad
feeling of loss and metaphysical sadness. A famous example is the mournful series of ten poems
in Duino Elegies, by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Other works that can be considered
elegiac in the broader sense are James Merrill’s monumental The Changing Light at
Sandover, Robert Lowell’s “For the Union Dead,” Seamus Heaney’s The Haw Lantern, and the
work of Czeslaw Milosz, which often laments the modern cruelties he witnessed in Europe.
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE: This is a literary form where the writer takes on the voice of a
character and speaks through them. Although dramatic monologues also occur
in theater and prose, the term most frequently refers to a poetic form where the poet creates a
character who speaks without interruption. Within the poem’s framework, the speaker reveals
surprising information about their character or situation to an implied or explicit audience, often
not intended to be the reader.
A dramatic monologue is also called a persona poem, and the character speaking in the poem is
referred to as a “persona.” The narrator of a persona poem or dramatic monologue is most
frequently a person, but dramatic monologues can also be told by animals, objects, places, or
abstract concepts (such as love or destiny).
Poets who write dramatic monologues or persona poems are occasionally referred to as
monologists.
While elements of the dramatic monologues can be seen in the theater of ancient Greece, as well
as the work of Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the form
as it is understood today was invented in the Victorian era. Robert Browning, Alfred Lord
Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Christina Rossetti were early pioneers. In their dramatic
monologues, a fictional character speaks without interruption to an audience, revealing important
information about their personality, situation, actions, or emotional state.
The form remained popular in the 20th century. In the Modernist era, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound
wrote persona poems, including Eliot’s famous “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and
Pound’s Personae, a collection of short poems written in the voice of different characters or
“masks.” In the 1950s and 1960s, despite the prevailing trend of confessionalism in poetry,
Gwendolyn Brooks, John Berryman, and Sylvia Plath all made notable contributions by writing
dramatic monologues that grappled with subjects like the African American urban experience,
mental illness, addiction, and suicidal ideation. Since the latter half of the 20th century, the form
has taken on a political dimension as poets began writing dramatic monologues in the voices of
misunderstood historical figures (as in Robert Hayden’s “A Letter from Phillis Wheatley,
London, 1773”) or reclaimed racial stock figures (Cornelius Eady’s Brutal Imagination).
Dramatic monologues fall into three main categories.
• Romantic monologues are poems where a character speaks about a romantic relationship,
either past, current, or desired. “Dilemma” by Anthony Hecht is an example of a
romantic monologue.
• Conversational monologues are poems where the dramatic monologue is presented by the
speaker as if it is part of a conversation. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Eolian Harp” is
one example.
• Philosophical monologues are poems where the character explicates their personal
philosophy or theories about the world. “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern
Alley” by William Wordsworth is one example of a philosophical monologue.
While the term dramatic monologue primarily refers to poetry, dramatic monologues also occur
in fiction and theater. They contain the same elements of the dramatic monologue poem:
• A character speaks in an uninterrupted flow
• The audience may be either present or absent
• The speaker reveals something about his or her character or situation through the
monologue
Unlike a dramatic monologue poem, the form in theater and fiction is not self-contained. These
dramatic monologues occur in the context of a longer narrative
The following poets have made notable contributions to the form:
• John Berryman, “Dream Song 14”
• Frank Bidart, “Ellen West”
• Gwendolyn Brooks, “A Sunset of the City”
• Robert Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover”
• Cornelius Eady, “The Cab Driver Who Ripped Me Off”
• T. S. Eliot, “Portrait of a Lady”
• Louise Erdrich, “The Butcher’s Wife”
• Louise Gluck, “Daisies”
• Robert Hayden, “Night, Death, Mississippi”
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “A Last Confession”
• Christina Rossetti, “The Convent Threshold”
• Sylvia Plath, “The Applicant”
• Ezra Pound, “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”
• Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”