A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length. A couplet is “closed” when the lines form a bounded grammatical unit like a sentence (see Dorothy Parker’s “Interview”: “The ladies men admire, I’ve heard, /Would shudder at a wicked word.”). The “heroic couplet” is written in iambic pentameter and features prominently in the work of 17th- and 18th-century didactic and satirical poets such as Alexander Pope: “Some have at first for wits, then poets pass’d, /Turn’d critics next, and proved plain fools at last.” Browse more couplet poems.
A Japanese verse form of three unrhyming lines in five, seven, and five syllables. It creates a single, memorable image, as in these lines by Kobayashi Issa, translated by Jane Hirshfield:
On a branch
floating downriver
a cricket, singing.
(In translating from Japanese to English, Hirshfield compresses the number of syllables.)
See also “Three Haiku, Two Tanka” by Philip Appleman and Robert Hass’s “After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa.” The Imagist poets of the early 20th century, including Ezra Pound and H.D., showed appreciation for the form’s linguistic and sensory economy; Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” embodies the spirit of haiku. Browse more haiku.
Haiku (or hokku)
Couplet
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 morelimericks.
Limerick
A grouping of lines separated from others in a poem. In modern free verse, the stanza, like a prose paragraph, can be used to mark a shift in mood, time, or thought.
Stanza
A Japanese form of five lines with 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables—31 in all. See Philip Appleman’s “Three Haiku, Two Tanka.” See also renga.
Tanka
The Diamante is a form similar to the Cinquain. The text forms the shape of a diamond.
Line 1: Noun or subject - one word
Line 2: Two Adjectives that describe line 1
Line 3: Three 'ing words that describe line 1
Line 4: Four nouns - the first two are connected with line 1; the last two are connected with line 7
Line 5: Three 'ing words that describe line 7
Line 6: Two adjectives that describe line 7
Line 7: Noun Synonym for the subject