Limerick
Origin:
Variants of the form of poetry referred to as Limerick poems can be traced back to the fourteenth century English history. Limericks were used in Nursery Rhymes and other poems for children. But as limericks were short, relatively easy to compose and bawdy or sexual in nature they were often repeated by beggars or the working classes in the British pubs and taverns of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventh centuries. The poets who created these limericks were therefore often drunkards! Limericks were also referred to as dirty.
Decription:
five-line humorous poem: a five-line humorous poem with a characteristic rhythm, often dealing with a risqué subject and typically opening with a line such as "There was a young lady called Jenny."
Lines one, two, and five rhyme with each other and have three metrical feet, and lines three and four rhyme with each other and have two metrical feet.
Haiku
Origin:
Haiku derives from a type of Japanese court poetry called tanka that was popularized and refined during the 9th through 12 centuries. Tanka was often written to explore religious or courtly themes and had a structure of five lines with 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure. During this period, it became a popular activity to write long strings of linked tanka verse. One person would often contribute the first three lines (5-7-5) of the poetic chain and a different author would complete the chain by composing a 7-7 section. Then another author would build on the previous 7-7, with another 5-7-5 passage. This chaining of verses called renga, could sometimes add up to hundreds of linked tanka.
Description:
short Japanese poem: a form of Japanese poetry with 17 syllables in three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, often describing nature or a season.
Alphabet
Origin:
There isn’t really a date in which alphabet poems emerged but due to its simple and predictable pattern it may be used with frequency by those who know the alphabet just by using their creativity and imagination.
Description:
An Alphabet Poem is one that uses that letters of the alphabet either as the beginning the letters of each line of the poem. There are three basic ways to write them and all are fun and easy to do.
Acrostic
Origin:
The origin of acrostics is not clearly stated anywhere. It is said that ACROSTICS were used by ancient religious cults to identify themselves to one another in secret. It is shrouded in religion and each religion lays claim to using acrostics first. I think it is safe to merely say that acrostics have been around for a while.
Description:
An acrostic poem is very easy to write. It can be about any subject. This kind of poem can be written in different ways, but the simplest form is to put the letters that spell your subject down the side of your page. When you have done this then you go back to each letter and think of a word, phrase or sentence that starts with that letter and describes your subject.
Concrete
Origin:
Introduced in the 1950's, the term "Concrete Poem" now often includes what was historically called the "Pattern Poem" or (in the terminology of Kenneth Koch) a "Shape Poem." In a Pattern or Shape Poem, the shape of the poem on the page symbolizes the content of the poem. In the 1950's poets in Switzerland and Sweden and Brazil started, independently, to develop "Concrete Poetry" (partly as an adaptation of "concrete painting", a minor European school of the 1940's). In such poems, the arrangement of words and phrases on the page indicated the poem's meaning. Poets who have made such mergers of appearance and content include George Herbert, Lewis Carrol (pen name of Charles L. Dodgson), Ezra Pound, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Stephane Mallarmé.
Description:
A concrete poem is a poem that forms a picture of the topic or follows the contours of a shape that is suggested by the topic. These can be used effectively with reports in science or social studies.
Free Verse
Origin:
Free verse is a literal translation of the French vers libre, which originated in late 19th-century France among poets, such as Arthur Rimbaud and Jules Laforgue, who sought to free poetry from the metrical regularity of the alexandrine. The term has also been applied by modern literary critics to the King James translation of the Bible, particularly the Song of Solomon and the Psalms, to certain poems of Matthew Arnold, and to the irregular poetry of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The form is also closely associated with English and American poets of the 20th cent. who sought greater liberty in verse structure, including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, and Marianne Moore.
Description:
Poetry organized according to the cadences of speech and image patterns rather than according to a regular metrical scheme. Its rhythms are based on patterned elements such as sounds, words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, rather than on the traditional units of metrical feet. Free verse thus eliminates much of the artificiality and some of the aesthetic distance of poetic expression.
Reference:
http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/concrete.htm
http://www.edu.pe.ca/stjean/playing%20with%20poetry/Hickey/acrostic.htm
http://www.boloji.com/poetry/learningzone/pkz13.htm
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-free-verse.htm
http://www.poetry-online.org/limericks.htm
http://www.cranberrydesigns.com/poetry/haiku/history.htm
http://www.answers.com/library/Columbia%20Encyclopedia-cid-31777
