Ghazal The ghazal is composed of a minimum of five couplets (sets of two lines) and typically no more than fifteen. Ghazals traditionally deal with melancholy, love, longing, or questions about existence and the world. Each line of the poem must be of the same length, though meter is not imposed in English. The first couplet introduces a theme in its second line. That theme (refrain) is repeated and altered for the second line of every subsequent stanza. The final couplet usually includes the poet’s signature, referring to the author in the first or third person, frequently including the poet’s own name or a derivation of its meaning. Ghazal Example America the Beautiful By Alicia Ostriker Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity in first grade when we learned to sing America The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner and say the Pledge of Allegiance to America We put our hands over our first grade hearts we felt proud to be citizens of America I said One Nation Invisible until corrected maybe I was right about America School days school days dear old Golden Rule Days when we learned how to behave in America What to wear, how to smoke, how to despise our parents who didn’t understand us or America Only later learning the Banner and the Beautiful live on opposite sides of the street in America Only later discovering the Nation is divisible by money by power by color by gender by sex America We comprehend it now this land is two lands one triumphant bully one still hopeful America Imagining amber waves of grain blowing in the wind purple mountains and no homeless in America Sometimes I still put my hand tenderly on my heart somehow or other still carried away by America Pantoum A pantoum is a poem that uses repetition. It is usually very emotional. Write a quatrain – a four line stanza. These lines will repeat throughout the poem, so they should be very thoughtful. For Stanza Two, take lines two and four from Stanza One and make them lines one and three. For Stanza Three, take lines two and four from Stanza Two and make them lines one and three. For the last stanza, go back to the first stanza of the poem. Use line three from Stanza One as line two, and use line one of Stanza One as line four. The pattern is shown below: line 1 line 2 line 3 line 4 line 2 line 5 line 4 line 6 line 5 line 7 line 6 line 8 line 7 line 3 line 8 line 1 Pantoum Example Pantoum of the Great Depression by Donald Justice Our lives avoided tragedy Simply by going on and on, Without end and with little apparent meaning. Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes. Simply by going on and on We managed. No need for the heroic. Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes. I don't remember all the particulars. We managed. No need for the heroic. There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows. I don't remember all the particulars. Across the fence, the neighbors were our chorus. There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows. Thank god no one said anything in verse. The neighbors were our only chorus, And if we suffered we kept quiet about it. At no time did anyone say anything in verse. It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us, And if we suffered we kept quiet about it. No audience would ever know our story. It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us. We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor. What audience would ever know our story? Beyond our windows shone the actual world. We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor. And time went by, drawn by slow horses. Somewhere beyond our windows shone the world. The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog. And time went by, drawn by slow horses. We did not ourselves know what the end was. The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog. We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues. But we did not ourselves know what the end was. People like us simply go on. We have our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues, But it is by blind chance only that we escape tragedy. And there is no plot in that; it is devoid of poetry. Sestina A sestina follows a strict pattern of repetition. There are seven stanzas in total. There are six words that rotate throughout the six, six-line stanzas causing different patterns throughout the poem. The final stanza is called an envoi. The envoi consists of all six words following the pattern below. The form is below. Each number is the stanza number. Each letter represents the last word of that line in the stanza. Therefore, A = one word, B = the second word, C = the third, etc… The order represents the last word in each line. 1. ABCDEF 2. FAEBDC 3. CFDABE 4. ECBFAD 5. DEACFB 6. BDFECA 7. (envoi) ECA or ACE = in the envoi the other words represented by BDF need to appear within the lines #37 on top 500 poets Sestina Example A Miracle for Breakfast by Elizabeth Bishop At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee, waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb that was going to be served from a certain balcony --like kings of old, or like a miracle. It was still dark. One foot of the sun steadied itself on a long ripple in the river. The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river. It was so cold we hoped that the coffee would be very hot, seeing that the sun was not going to warm us; and that the crumb would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle. At seven a man stepped out on the balcony. He stood for a minute alone on the balcony looking over our heads toward the river. A servant handed him the makings of a miracle, consisting of one lone cup of coffee and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb, his head, so to speak, in the clouds--along with the sun. Was the man crazy? What under the sun was he trying to do, up there on his balcony! Each man received one rather hard crumb, which some flicked scornfully into the river, and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee. Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle. I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle. A beautiful villa stood in the sun and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee. In front, a baroque white plaster balcony added by birds, who nest along the river, --I saw it with one eye close to the crumb-- and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb my mansion, made for me by a miracle, through ages, by insects, birds, and the river working the stone. Every day, in the sun, at breakfast time I sit on my balcony with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee. We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee. A window across the river caught the sun as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony. Sonnet There are different types of sonnets; the template is for a Shakespearean sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet is a fourteen line poem with a set rhyme scheme and meter. It is written in iambic pentameter u/u/u/u/u/ with five sets of unstressed and stressed syllables per line. It is written in three quatrains – three groups of four lines each. It ends with a couplet, a set of two lines with the same meter and end rhyme. The rhyme scheme is as follows: A B A B C D C D E F E F G G Sonnet Example #1 Sonnet 116 By William Shakespeare Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me prov’d. I never write, nor no man ever lov’d. Sonnet Example #2 Sonnet 18 By William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Though are more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st; So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Villanelle A villanelle is a nineteen line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. It is made up of five tercets (three line stanzas) followed by one quatrain -(a four line stanza).