Forms of Poetry

Yesterday I posted a poem I wrote some time ago. It is a sestina, which is a specific form of poetry.

The definition of a sestina, from Wikipedia, is as follows:

A sestina is a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by
a tercet (called its envoy or tornada), for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six
words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time; if we number the first stanza's lines 123456, then the words ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243, then 64125, then 532614, then 451362, and finally 246531.... These six words then appear in the
tercet as well, with the tercet's first line usually containing 1 and 2, its second 3 and 4, and its third 5 and 6 (but other versions exist...).

Thus we get this form in my poem (I prefer to use ABCDEF instead of numbers, so I'm using both for an example):

grass (A)(1)
roses (B)(2)
bloom (C)(3)
sun (D)(4)
sea (E)(5)
garden (F)(6)

garden (F)(6)
grass (A)(1)
sea (E)(5)
roses (B)(2)
sun (D)(4)
bloom (C) (3)

etc.

Another form of poetry that I have written in the past is the Villanelle.

A1 (refrain)
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1 (refrain)

a
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1 (refrain)

a
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1
A2 (refrain)

One of the most famous villanelle's is Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which you can read at the link.

Another poetry form that's fun to play with is the sonnet. There are many different forms of sonnet.

Here is the diagram for a Shakespearean Sonnet:

(a)
(b)
(a)
(b)

(c)
(d)
(c)
(d)

(e)
(f)
(e)
(f)

(g)
(g)

This is the most familiar form for English readers, I think.

The Spenserian sonnet has this pattern:

(a)
(b)
(a)
(b)

(b)
(c)
(b)
(c)

(c)
(d)
(c)
(d)

(e)
(e)

I like playing with poetry forms when I'm feeling blocked. It becomes a game, then, like working a crossword puzzle, to try and make it work out properly.