Verse Forms

A teacher once said chaos touches everyone, so that became my refrain.
Did we want to lose all we had…

                                      PRIMEAt dawn, the shapes of cypresses in fog
Were fingers pointing up from graves, as if what's born…

The zoo is tough terrain; hilly.
I wheel as fast as I can —
then Mum shouts ‘Keep up!’
I stop. ‘Hand me…

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her...

Ultimately everything
          Becomes boring.
Even great miracles
          Become boring.
Even the tremendous powers of…

a river slips
                        in shifting leaves
sifting. a river sifts
                        and falls to pieces
in which not seen
     ...

            its a secrete

            the grls speeching mye hole  /

            inn 2 the lindens  /  wee go out

        & playe footballe  /  verie nashenallie

        how wee leeve a stall  /  piteus

                    wen the grls

                    speech me  /
 
this is how u make a porno   /    ...

(Pronounciation: “guzzle”) Originally an Arabic verse form dealing with loss and romantic love, medieval Persian poets embraced the ghazal, eventually making it their own. Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme.

A Malaysian verse form in quatrains with an intricate repeating pattern.

A popular narrative song passed down orally. In the English tradition, it usually follows a form of rhymed quatrains. Folk (or traditional) ballads are anonymous and recount tragic, comic, or heroic stories.

A Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time.

A fixed light-verse form of five generally anapestic lines rhyming AABBA. Edward Lear, who popularized the form, fused the third and fourth lines into a single line with internal rhyme. Limericks are traditionally bawdy or just irreverent; see “A Young Lady of Lynn” or Lear’s “There was an Old Man with a Beard.” Browse more limericks.

A complex French verse form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoi. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas; the closing envoi contains all six words, two per line, placed in the middle and at the end of the three lines.

A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme originating in Italy and brought to England in the 16th century. Literally a “little song,” the sonnet traditionally reflects upon a single sentiment, with a clarification or “turn” of thought in its concluding lines. There are many types of sonnets.

A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas.

Look at your feet, so beautiful. Do
not step on the ground, filth will smear them;

your future will fill with pricks. He with a
fearful heart, understand dead. Death will dance

on your head — lift your eyes and see. I am
its servant,...

1.
La cogida y la muerte

A las cinco de la tarde.
Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde.
Un niño trajo la blanca sábana
a las cinco de la tarde.
Una espuerta de cal ya prevenida
a las cinco de la tarde.
Lo demás era muerte...