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Poetry Library Guide: Writing Poetry

This guide provides library and internet resources for the finding, reading, and writing poetry as well as criticism on it.

Lists of Poetic Forms and Devices

Examples of poetic forms:

  • Acrostic
  • Ballad
  • Cinquain
  • Concrete
  • Elegy
  • Epics
  • Erasure/Black Out Poetry
  • Free Verse
  • Haiku
  • Limerick
  • Ode
  • Pastoral
  • Petrarchan
  • Prose Poetry
  • Sestina
  • Sonnet
  • Villanelle

Examples of Poetic Devices:

  • Alliteration
  • Analogy
  • Anaphora
  • Apostrophe
  • Conceit
  • End-stopped lines
  • Enjambment
  • Metonymy
  • Oxymoron
  • Pun
  • Repetition
  • Synecdoche

Elements and Structure of Poetry

  • Author/Poet
  • Feet
  • Form
  • Lines
  • Meter
  • Mood
  • Rhyme
  • Rhyme Scheme
  • Scheme
  • Space
  • Stanza
  • Stanza break
  • Title
  • Verse

Basic Sources